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Theses and Dissertations
2016
The work-life balance of female adjunct faculty at Southern California community colleges
Jennifer Triplett
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Graduate School of Education and Psychology
THE WORK-LIFE BALANCE OF FEMALE ADJUNCT FACULTY
AT SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy
by
Jennifer Triplett
September, 2016
Margaret Weber, Ph.D. – Dissertation Chairperson
This dissertation, written by
Jennifer Triplett
under the guidance of a Faculty Committee and approved by its members, has been submitted to and accepted by the Graduate Faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
Dissertation Committee:
Margaret Weber, Ph.D., Chair
Linda Purrington, Ed.D.
Robert Barner, Ph.D.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
page
LIST OF TABLES ...... vii
LIST OF FIGURES ...... viii
DEDICATION ...... ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... xi
VITA ...... xii
ABSTRACT ...... xiii
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study ...... 1
Statement of the Problem ...... 8 Purpose of the Study ...... 9 Significance of Study ...... 9 Research Questions ...... 10 Theoretical Framework ...... 10 Key Definitions ...... 12 Delimitations ...... 14 Limitations ...... 14 Assumptions ...... 15 Organization of the Study ...... 15
Chapter 2: Review of the Literature ...... 17
Themes of Interview Questions ...... 17 Community Colleges: Role and Reasons for Growth ...... 19 Community College Adjunct Faculty ...... 21 Female Community College Adjuncts ...... 29 Tenure ...... 33 Motherhood in Academia ...... 39 Gender Equality in the Workplace ...... 48 Life Course Theory ...... 52 Summary ...... 54
Chapter 3: Methodology ...... 56
Restatement of Research Questions ...... 58 Research Methodology ...... 58 Setting ...... 60 v
page
Population, Sample, and Sampling Procedure ...... 60 Human Subjects Consideration ...... 61 Data Gathering Instruments ...... 62 Validity and Reliability of Data Gathering Instruments ...... 65 Data Gathering Procedures and Strategies ...... 68 Data Management ...... 70 Proposed Data Analysis Process ...... 70 Summary ...... 72
Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Findings ...... 73
Data Collection Procedures ...... 74 Selection Criteria ...... 75 Interviews ...... 75 Population Descriptions ...... 77 Data Analysis ...... 78 Findings ...... 79 Research Question 1 ...... 79 Research Question 2 ...... 89 Research Question 3 ...... 94 Summary of Findings ...... 114
Chapter 5: Conclusion ...... 116
Overview of the Study ...... 116 Demographics ...... 117 Findings in Relationship to Existing Literature ...... 118 Identity ...... 119 Relational Style ...... 120 Drive and Motivation ...... 122 Adaptive Style ...... 124 Coping Strategies ...... 125 Work-life Balance ...... 127 Mentorship ...... 131 Limitations of the Study ...... 132 Recommendations ...... 132 Researcher Reflection ...... 135 Conclusion ...... 135
REFERENCES ...... 137
APPENDIX A: Instrument ...... 153
APPENDIX B: Demographic Form ...... 155
vi
page
APPENDIX C: Informed Consent Letter ...... 157
APPENDIX D: Interview Protocol ...... 160
APPENDIX E: Invitation Letter to Participate ...... 162
vii
LIST OF TABLES
page
Table 1. Population Demographics ...... 78
Table 2. NVivo Analysis of the Number of Respondents and References to the Themes ...... 114
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
page
Figure 1. Life course theory and the four theoretical concepts ...... 55
Figure 2. Interconnecting the life story method to female adjunct faculty members and how they balance work and life ...... 57
Figure 3. NVivo word cloud ...... 95
ix
DEDICATION
“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
—Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
This work is dedicated to those who have tirelessly supported and encouraged me, regardless of what new idea I was pursuing. My parents, Dave and Diane Verissimo, have never wavered in their encouragement, and I would not be where I am today without their help and guidance. They epitomize the belief that a person can do anything she sets her mind to and works hard for, and their selfless devotion to their children over the past 33 years shows how much they believe in what their children can do. I also thank my two sisters, Sherri and Melinda
Verissimo, and future brother-in-law Jim Joe Farrant, for without their help in childcare, and being awesome aunts and uncle, this degree would not have been feasible. They, coupled with my parents, and wonderful husband, Kevin Triplett, have truly stepped in and become the village that it takes to raise a child.
I want to thank my dear friend, Dr. Dalia Juarez, for not only mentoring me in my career, but also in life. Without her suggestion, guidance, and insistence, I would not have pursued this degree when I did. She has been my dissertation friend, my running friend, my Disneyland friend, my travelling friend, and is now my doctor-friend.
I would also like to thank one of my dearest and best friends, Carrie Eagle, for her never- ending support, for always being understanding, and for being one of my biggest cheerleaders.
She is truly the friend that is always there to listen, to cheer me up, and to watch bad reality TV with.
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I would also like to thank my life-long friends: Ashlie Freeberg, Amy Alvarez, Tiffany
Hood, Susie Walsh, Janna Denhart, and Jessie Martin. I have been missing-in-action the last few years, but I thank you for your support and understanding, and I look forward to spending more time with you and your families.
Last but not least, I want to thank my husband, Kevin Triplett, for his unyielding support for all my crazy ideas and plans. He has always supported me, regardless of the idea, and I thank you for joining me on this wild and crazy ride. I also want to thank you for the times when I was explaining my research methodology and nothing I was saying made sense, but you just listened and nodded anyway. Just listening means more than you could know. Your unwavering support and love have helped guide me on this doctoral journey.
I also want to thank my dear little daughter, Olivia Triplett, for coming along for this ride at the very beginning of my program. I did not know how I would be able to balance school, work, and a child, but we have figured it out to the best of our abilities and with the help and support of family and friends, and I thank her for being an amazing daughter through this whole process. I am so excited to watch her grow and develop and to be her mother as she becomes a smart and beautiful young lady.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I first want to thank Pepperdine University for giving me the opportunity to obtain a degree that I did not know would ever be possible. As an educator, I love learning and truly appreciate the privilege and opportunity to continue my education and thank all those who have made this journey possible.
To my dissertation committee members:
Dr. Margaret Weber, my chair, you have gone above and beyond in helping guide me with this process and helping me navigate the waters of work-life balance. You took me under your wing and give me a platform in which to explore my study. I greatly appreciate all your help and support and your continued belief in me.
Dr. Linda Purrington, you have truly been a role model and inspiration for myself and the others in my cohort. Because of you, I was given the confidence to move forward with this program, and I strive to be like you someday.
Dr. Robert Barner, thank you for your endless support and positive outlook. You have truly embraced and supported my research and I thank you for all the feedback and help you have given. Thank you for supporting me with this journey.
To all my professors in my EDEL program, thank you for your inspiration and guidance.
Thank you to my C11 cohort and to those I worked on projects and assignments with. Your help was more valuable than you could possibly know, and I am so grateful for these new friendships.
And a final thank you to the women who shared their lives and stories for this research project. This is a chance for your voice to be heard and for your experiences to be shared.
Thank you for believing in this project and for sharing your lives.
xii
VITA
Jennifer Triplett
Education Doctorate of Education in Educational Leadership, Pepperdine University 2016 Administration, and Policy
Master of Arts in English: Rhetoric & Composition California State University, 2012 Dominguez Hills
Bachelor of Arts in English & Dramatic Arts University of California, 2005 Santa Barbara
Experience
Adjunct Instructor El Camino College, Torrance, CA 2015-present
Adjunct Instructor 2012-present Santa Monica College, Santa Monica, CA
Adjunct Instructor 2012-present El Camino College Compton Center, Compton, CA
Adjunct Instructor Fall 2012 Los Angeles Mission College, Sylmar, CA
Professional Activities/Presentations
2016: The Work-Life Balance of Female Adjunct Faculty at Southern California Community Colleges. Women in Leadership: Work-Life Balance, Los Angeles, CA
xiii
ABSTRACT
In community colleges, over 70% of faculty members are adjuncts, and over 52% of these adjuncts are women. Community colleges have been celebrated as institutions that include women in their philosophy of equity, openness, and democracy (Bailey, 2008). Women may be more likely to work at community colleges where the minimum requirement is a master’s degree for employment, compared to 4-year institutions that require doctorates, and allow them to balance their work and personal lives (Cohen & Brawer, 2008; Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006).
This study examines the work-life balance of female adjunct instructors working at the community college level and utilizes the work-life balance theory to help understand the identity, relational style, motivation and drive, adaptive style, and strategies for these women.
This study utilized a phenomenological, qualitative approach by having female adjunct faculty participate in one semi-structured interview; 20 women participated. Findings showed that the participants were often first generation college students, which resulted in the majority of the women having goals of achieving a different education level than their family members.
Relationships also played an important role in helping participants balance work and family life.
Most participants were very driven and have high motivation to pursue career goals and to become a full-time faculty member. Female adjunct faculty also demonstrated high levels of adaptability due to the inconsistent nature of being an adjunct faculty and having schedules that fluctuated and changed on a semester-to-semester basis.
In community colleges, over 70% of faculty members are adjuncts, and over 52% of these adjuncts are women. However, there is a significant lack of research regarding these women and their experiences. Due to the sheer number of women faculty members represented in community colleges, it would be assumed that this would be a highly researched group
xiv
(Townsend, 1995a, 1995b). However, there is a paucity of research on women faculty, particularly female part-time faculty, in community colleges. The topic of women within the community college level is an area that has been severely overlooked and under researched within higher education literature (Townsend, 1995a, 1995b; Twombly, 1993; Wolgemuth, Kees,
& Safarik, 2003).
1
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study
Women in America are advancing faster than women in most other nations and outnumbering the amount of boys in high school, college, and graduate schools. Many women today are starting within the work force at a higher salary than men; however, typically as a career path rises, the number of women decrease. There are “more than 50% of women at entry level to 10 to 20% in senior management” (Slaughter, 2015, para. 3). The reason for this decline is that many women are unable to sustain an enjoyable work-life balance. On the opposite end of the spectrum, it is an even bigger problem for the “42 million women in America on the brink of poverty . . . suffering not only from too little flexibility but also too much, as many low-wage service jobs no longer have a guaranteed number of hours a week” (Slaughter, 2015, para. 6).
Women have been an increased fixture in the workforce since World War II. This change was especially evident within community colleges that had an increase in enrollment due to the creation of the first federal student aid programs and soldiers obtaining tuition benefits
(Rudolph & Thelin, 1990; Thedwall, 2008). This increase in enrollment forced community colleges to utilize the help of adjunct (part-time) faculty and was also favorable for institutions because adjuncts worked for less pay and could be hired or non-renewed quickly (American
Association of University Professors, 2003; Baldwin & Chronister, 2001; Meyer, 1998).
Community colleges are also an organization wherein women are highly represented.
Women make up more than 50% of community college students, 45% of community college faculty, and represent one third of the presidencies in all community colleges (Drake, 2008;
Townsend, 1995a, 1995b; Townsend, 2008). It is believed that women are more highly represented within community colleges than 4-year institutions due to the open-door and open- access policy that community colleges utilize which allows historically marginalized students
2 such as minorities and women to have access to higher education due to a lack of strict admission requirements to attend the institution (Cohen & Brawer, 2008; Townsend &
Twombly, 2007).
Community colleges are typically perceived as a good place for women to work since women have been highly represented within this institution as students, staff, faculty, and also within the representation of community college presidents (Bailey, 2008; Lester, 2008). Since the 1970s, women students have been the majority, and 45% of full-time 2-year college faculty members were women, compared to 34% in the 4-year sector. Also, women presidents were also more prevalent in community colleges than in 4-year institutions (Lester, 2008). However, the
“representation of female faculty among 2-year colleges’ is partially the result of the tremendous growth of this institutions in the 20th century, from 207 schools in 1920 to 694 in 1969”
(Townsend, 1995a, p. 40). Due to the growth of community colleges, the demand for instructors increased and gave female faculty an opportunity to obtain positions; Townsend (1995a, 1995b) clarifies that the high presence of females in community colleges is due to the large expansions of enrollment and growth rather than any conscious decision on the community college’s part to extend equality to women.
According to Touchton and Davis (1991):
If numbers signify power, then women faculty members are an important force in the community college. In 1991-92, almost 45% of full-time faculty members in colleges offering the A.A. degree were women: 43.2% in the public sector and 54.1% in the private. By comparison, in 4-year schools offering the B.A., only 35% of the full-time faculty members were women; in doctoral-granting institutions, barely 26% were women. (p. 28)
Due to the number of women faculty members represented in community colleges, it would be assumed that this would be a highly researched group (Townsend, 1995a, 1995b). However, there is a paucity of research on women faculty, particularly female part-time faculty, in
3 community colleges. Research on women within the community college level is an area that has been severely overlooked within higher education literature (Townsend, 1995a, 1995b;
Twombly, 1993; Wolgemut et al., 2003).
Wolf-Wendel, Ward, and Twombly (2007) explain that there is very little research commenting on female community college faculty, how they strive to balance work and family, as well as little to no research on how part-time female adjuncts maintain a work-life balance.
Most research that focuses on females in community colleges typically examines if female faculty feel the atmosphere of a community college is warm and inviting or chilly. There is also a lack of literature on examining the experiences of women that have decided to have children early on in their careers (Wolf-Wendel et al., 2007). It is believed that women are more likely to work at community colleges where the minimum requirement is a master’s degree for employment than 4-year institutions that require doctorates, and it has been discovered that community colleges are typically more able to allow women faculty the ability to balance their work and personal lives (Cohen & Brawer, 2008; Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006).
Working within the community college system seems to make it possible for many female faculty members to achieve professional fulfillment without having to neglect personal goals such as having a family (Townsend, 1995a, 1995b; Townsend, 1998). Most women that have been studied who taught at a 2-year university did so because they thought it was more beneficial to maintaining a family and a career (Wolf-Wendel et al., 2007; Wolfinger, Mason, &
Goulden, 2009). Since faculty members are allowed some flexibility in scheduling work hours, it is believed that female faculty at community colleges have a better ability to raise a family while maintaining a career than primary and secondary education teachers (Townsend, 1995a,
1995b). Also, teaching in K-12 education was the primary career opportunity for many women
4 in the 1960s and 1970s, and teaching at the community college level provides more status and perceived level of achievement to many women (Townsend, 1995a, 1995b). Seidman (1985) reports that “particularly for women, the community college represents a level of achievement they had not even considered possible for themselves” (p. 11).
Community colleges represent almost half of the nation’s nonprofit higher education institutions; however, the community college is of the lowest status and power among 4-year universities and colleges (Townsend, 1995a, 1995b). Being of the lowest ranking in the higher education hierarchy results in its employees also being viewed and treated poorly within the academy (Harper, Baldwin, Gansneder, & Chronister, 2001; Thedwall, 2008; Townsend, 1995a,
1995b). Women make up almost half of community colleges full-time faculty, so it would be assumed that female faculty members are mainstreamed. However, the large numbers of female community college faculty is proof of the ostracism of women as faculty within this institution because the community college is an institution that operates separately from the rest of higher education (Finkelstein, 1984; Moore & Sagaria, 1991). Therefore, the people who make up the faculty at community colleges are actually viewed as second-class citizens within the academic domain (Harper et al., 2001; Thedwall, 2008; Townsend, 1995a, 1995b). From this angle, it becomes clear that although community colleges are female friendly, the fact that they are a community college immediately marginalizes women faculty who are already at the margins. As women, they are inevitably placed on the sidelines, and as academicians, women are disregarded because they work in a community college (Townsend, 1995a, 1995b).
Community colleges are institutions that are women-friendly, but as a woman’s career path progresses from adjunct to a full-time tenured position, the amount of women who move to a mid-level leadership position, such as dean to senior administrator, severely decreases (Cross,
5
2013). Therefore, community colleges open doors to opportunity for women, but they tend to stifle the progression of advancement and promotion (Knapp, Kelly-Reid, & Grinder, 2011). It is also hypothesized that women may have lower expectations of being treated and rewarded fairly at work since women have traditionally placed more importance on integrating their professional and personal lives than men (Folger & Greenberg, 1985; Heilman, Battle, Keller, &
Lee, 1998).
Research has shown that typically the women who choose to work outside of the home are happier and healthier than those who stay at home; however, there is lengthy documentation of higher-education literature that has revealed the struggle female academicians face when trying to balance both life and work responsibilities (Armenti, 2004; Halpern & Cheung, 2008).
Wolf-Wendel and Ward (2006) have discovered that women faculty at community colleges tend to have teaching loads that are heavier than other institutional types, yet these female faculty at community colleges believed it was a worthy trade-off for having a fairly predictable, family- friendly schedule. Many women are also drawn to community colleges due to the community college mission, which is to serve a wider group of students than other higher education institutions (Cohen & Brawer, 2008; Everett, 2011). However, community college faculty members are also employed in institutions that those in academe would view as marginal or undesirable since 2-year institutions’ faculty members are mainly responsible for transmitting knowledge rather than advancing it through research (Green & Ciez-Volz, 2011; Townsend &
Twonbly, 2007). Community college instructors are also teaching students that would not typically be able to be admitted to a 4-year institute (Townsend, 1995a, 1995b).
Community colleges represent more female employees than other higher education institutions and one of the reasons for this is due to the high number of female adjunct instructors
6 they employ (Cross, 2013). At many institutes, using temporary or part-time faculty has become the norm because administrators make balances and assign classes on the assumption that part- time adjunct faculty members, who are only hired for a temporary assignment, will teach approximately 20-50% of undergraduate classes (Gappa & Leslie, 1993). As of 2009, 70% of the 400,000 faculty members hired at community colleges were part-time, contingent, or non- tenure track hires (Knapp, Kelly-Reid, & Grinder, 2011). And when looking at gender, “women were substantially more likely to hold part-time or adjunct positions than were male faculty.
Very nearly half of all women faculty were part-time, while close to two-thirds of male faculty were full-time” (Leslie, 1997, p. 5). This shows that not only are there more men that hold tenure than women, there are also less men in contingent, non-tenure track positions than women
(Mandelco, 2010).
Leslie and Gappa (2002) discovered that 52% of women teach part-time because full- time opportunities are not available. This shows that although there are many women represented in higher education, they are holding part-time positions in which they lack the protection that tenure-track positions hold which is job security, academic freedom, benefits, organization voice, and opportunity to promote within the institution (AAUP, 2003; Cross,
2013).
Contingent faculty members have both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to teach. Many adjuncts choose to teach for personal growth and fulfillment while others teach for monetary reasons. Those with intrinsic motivations are almost always employed elsewhere and decide to teach part-time due to the satisfaction they obtain from the work itself (Gappa & Leslie, 1993).
One reason given as to why the part-time work force is comprised more of women than the full- time academic work force might also demonstrate that academia’s tenure system usually clashes
7 with a woman’s childbearing years. This results in women who want to balance a family and a career being forced into accepting less rewarding and secure forms of work (Gappa & Leslie,
1993). This is also true for men, too, but women are more excessively affected (Gappa & Leslie,
1993). Due to a historical approach of striving to effectively integrate personal and professional lives, women might find part-time employment more beneficial since it can allow them to better balance their personal lives as well as their careers (Feldman & Turnley, 2004).
Gappa and Leslie (1993) found that dissatisfaction with second-class status was almost universal among the part-timers they interviewed for their study. Part-time faculty expressed anger and frustration about their treatment, work load, salary and benefits, and the overall lack of appreciation for their efforts (Gappa & Leslie, 1993). Adjuncts often mentioned feelings of anxiety about their temporary positions and expressed annoyance that they were typically never consulted or involved in decisions that directly affect them. This annoyance was often heightened by the feeling that any type of protest or demand for a more central role could jeopardize their future employment (Gappa & Leslie, 1993).
There are very few organizations that report about women within the community college.
The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) made two announcements in the
1970s within the framework of equal opportunity and affirmative action (Townsend, 1995a,
1995b). In 1973, the American Association of Women in Community Colleges (AAWCC) was formed and it has worked to develop female administrators through both regional and state activities (Townsend, 1995a, 1995b). Perhaps in some part due to this, there is a higher percentage of female presidents within the community college than any other higher education institution (Townsend, 1995a, 1995b). However, women are still poorly represented in all higher-level positions within higher education as a whole. Eaton (1981) believes that due to
8 contemporary feminism, the community college should be the one leading the way in changes that need to take place; however, she also explains that the individual is the primary one responsible for this achievement. This emphasizes that women are still responsible for creating social change (Townsend, 1995a, 1995b).
Statement of the Problem
Women are highly represented within community colleges because they are employed in part-time, underpaid, and undervalued positions. The women who do move up to tenure track, full-time positions are rarely able to advance through the glass ceiling to high-powered positions such as CEO or President. Although research has focused on female faculty members who are on the tenure-track and have children, it is typically about those who are employed at 4-year institutions. There has been little focus on how female community college faculty balance family and work commitments (Finkel & Olswang, 1996; Perna, 2001; Ward & Wolf-Wendel,
2004; Wolf-Wendel et al., 2007). Many researchers have discussed the plight of adjunct instructors, but very rarely has anyone discussed the experience of the female adjunct in community college, especially the work-life balance these women juggle. Therefore, it is important to study the work-life balance of female adjunct instructors at the community college level to explore their experiences. This also allows a deeper understanding of the struggles they encounter, discover why they have chosen to become an educator, why they continue to remain one when employed in a position that rarely offers advancement into a full-time, tenure-track position, and to learn what coping strategies these women implement to maintain a work-life balance.
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Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to explore the work-life balance of women adjunct faculty employed at the community college level in Southern California. There is very little literature that examines the experience of the female adjunct employee unless comparing men to females or looking at adjuncts as a universal group rather than solely looking at the female experience.
Therefore, this study strives to understand the lived experiences of women within the adjunct ranks of community colleges, how and why they became adjunct instructors, and what strategies they are employing to balance their work and home life. By using a qualitative, phenomenological approach, this study looks at the experiences of female adjuncts and the different factors that have influenced their careers and choices to become an adjunct faculty member.
Significance of Study
In this study, women share the experiences that have shaped their life course and the strategies they employ to maintain a work-life balance. This study utilized an evolution of the life course theory (Elder, 1994, 1998) and examines four distinct factors in a person’s life course that have been found to be important in shaping an individual’s gender roles such as: identity, relationships, drive and motivation, and adaptive style (Giele, 2002). Giele’s (2008) examination of a woman’s past, present and future directly guide the research questions for this study.
Understanding the lived experiences of female adjunct faculty may help community college administrators, policy makers, and researchers understand why there is a large overrepresentation of females within community colleges as well as what strategies these women are employing in order to have a balanced home life and work life. The findings from this study also reveal the obstacles that all women face when striving to maintain a work-life balance, may
10 reveal some strategies they employ to maintain a positive work-life balance, and may reveal what is preventing some women from achieving full-time tenured-track positions.
Research Questions
There are three research questions that guided this study:
1. How do tenure-seeking female adjunct instructors at Southern California community
colleges describe their life course as being influenced by identity structure, relationship
style, drive, motivation and adaptive style.
2. What coping strategies are female adjuncts in community colleges using in able to
maintain a work-life balance?
3. What demographic factors (age, ethnicity, socioeconomics, and generation) of female
adjunct instructors are associated with the life story elements (identity, adaptations,
motivation, and relationships) that impact the work-life balance of female part-time
instructors.
Theoretical Framework
This study used an adaptation of the life course theory to guide its conceptual framework.
Life course is a field of investigation that gives a framework for researching a problem or concept to give awareness of the influence that changing societies can have on the development of lives (Elder, 1985). Elder proposed that there were four themes of life course and “life course
. . . consist[s] of age-graded patterns that are embedded in social institutions and history. This view is grounded in a contextualist perspective and emphasizes the implications of social pathways in historical time and place for human development and aging” (Elder, Johnson, &
Crosnoe, 2003, p. 4).
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Giele (2002, 2008) then expanded the life course theoretical framework to show factors related to gender roles and life stories. This study is framed as a life-story method through an interview process where the entire context of a woman’s story is explored in order to find patterns among the women being analyzed. This context gives insight into each woman’s frame of reference regarding identity, types of relationships, drive and motivation, and adaptive style
(Giele, 2002). Giele (2002) acknowledges that while a single interview does not make it possible to understand a person’s entire life history, it is feasible to extract a story in which important events and key life transitions are discovered which convey distinctive themes in a person’s life as well as a social context in which those themes can be compared to others in order to discover what precursors lead to specific outcomes.
Giele also became interested in how social system requirements are connected with individual motives and goals through the social structure. She looks at not only how an environment can shape a person but also how people intentionally try to change their own situation as well as the larger society (Elder & Giele, 2009). Giele found that life course change and feminist activity are multi-directional and that a shift toward women holding multiple roles has evolved among women born since the 1930s (Elder & Giele, 2009). The life course theory proposes that those women who have similarities in education, age, race, and economic positions might end up having different attitudes, values, or personal individualities that add to their desire to be a homemaker or seek out a career (Elder, 1994, 1998; Giele, 2002). The life course theory allows a structure to discover what empowers an individual from so-called “minority status” to make their way into “majority status.”
The life course method also observes different pathways and trajectories that people live.
It has been found that role obligations, such as responsibilities and actions, changed with age
12 since the obligation of a parent changes as a child grows up. “Role sets [are] characterized by role acquisition (e.g., becoming married, becoming a parent) . . . [and are] characterized by role relinquishment and role obligation change (e.g., becoming divorced, becoming a widow or widower, caretaking for an aging parent)” (Latz & Rediger, 2013, p. 282). Having a good work- life balance was found to be easier for those people whose role as a parent had become less demanding due to children’s growth, yet there were no overt differences between those who held a part-time or full-time position as a faculty member. However, tenure or time spent in a position were major factors in the formation of a work-life balance since it was more challenging for those just beginning their careers and adjusting to their career to maintain a good work-life balance. Baby Boomers were also more likely to subscribe to dominant gender roles than
Generation Xers (Latz & Rediger, 2013).
This theoretical framework informed the study focus because the “life course has been applied to the interweaving of work careers and family pathways that are subject to cultural changes with future options” (Weber, 2015, p. 14). The purpose of this study is to examine how women adjuncts’ life course has been shaped by their past as well as their expectations and hopes for the future. The life course theoretical framework was later expanded by Giele (2002) to examine the factors that are so dire in shaping a person’s gender roles such as identity, relationships, drive and motivation, and adaptive style (Weber, 2015). By asking women to examine these aspects of their lives, it is hoped that important information has been gleamed about how women see themselves and what factors shaped their identity.
Key Definitions
• Adaptation (or Adaptive): Innovative versus traditional, how a person responded to
change and transition (Giele, 2002).
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• Adjunct: A person who is only contracted to teach on a part-time, semester-to-semester
basis. These faculty members can also be identified as contingent faculty, TAs, non-
tenure track faculty, post docs, or part-timers (AAUP, 2011).
• Chilly climate. An environment created by the characteristics of the dominant
inhabitants, which could either be demographically or psychologically (Strange &
Banning, 2001).
• Community college: An institution accredited to award an associates in arts or associates
in science and is also recognized as a vocational institute, technical institute, junior
college, adult education center and city college (Cohen & Brawer, 2008).
• Glass ceiling. The transparent barriers that have prohibited women and minority men
from rising above a certain level of management and decision making positions (Smallen-
Grob, 2003).
• Identity: Conventional versus being different, associated with time, space, culture (Giele,
2002).
• Mommy track. A category of instructors who typically hold part-time positions while
having young children at home. It is also believed that this might enable mothers to
remain in the field and gain experience for possible future employment (Wolfinger et al.,
2009).
• Motivation: Achievement versus nurturance reflects motivation (Giele, 2002).
• Relationship: Shaped by loyalties, connections and networks (Giele, 2002).
• Second glass ceiling. The exclusion of women from the top leadership positions in
organizations (Mason & Eckman, 2007).
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• Second shift. A term coined for the housework and childcare a mother does once she
comes home from her job (Mason & Ekman, 2007).
• Second tier. A career track mothers typically get on once they have had a child and now
can’t keep up the fast-pace of the fast track career. This is made up of part-time positions
(Mason & Ekman, 2007).
• Tenure-track faculty: Faculty that have been given assurance of his or her professional
security and academic freedom (Euben, 2002).
• Work-life balance (also work-family balance): Expectations that are gender and role
related that have been decided among an individual and partners within family and work
areas (Grzywacz & Carlson, 2007).
Delimitations
Delimitations of this study are the characteristics that limit the scope of the research study. This study looks specifically at female adjuncts that work at one or more community colleges in Southern California. The subjects have taught at the community college level for at least 3 years, and their primary source of income is teaching. The subjects were asked about their work-life balance, but they were not required to have children or be married. Because there is such a large amount of female adjuncts in the United States, it is not presumed that this study equally represents all female adjuncts in community colleges. However, the data from this study seeks to explain how some female adjunct faculty struggle to maintain a work-life balance and any coping strategies that they use.
Limitations
A potential limitation to this study may be researcher bias since the researcher is also a female, part-time adjunct instructor at a community college in Southern California and struggles
15 to maintain a work-life balance. In order to minimize researcher bias, the researcher did not assume to know what the participants’ experiences are and did not add personal responses or comments to the participants’ interview. Other limitations to the study are the sample size of willing participants as well as participants’ ability to have the time to be interviewed. There is also a limitation that the sample size is small and only drawn from a single region within a single state, so therefore the results may not be generalizable to all of that region, state, or to the United
States.
Assumptions
This researcher assumes that women are just as capable as men to obtain and fulfill the duties of a full-time faculty member and that they deserve to have a work-life balance. It is also assumed that the majority of female adjunct instructors were struggling to maintain a work-life balance and might be interested in full-time faculty positions. This researcher also believes that women are dealing with some form of work-life balance regardless of whether they are a mother or married, so this is not a requirement for a subject to participate in the study. Finally, it is also assumed that the subjects were open and candid with their experiences and opinions.
Organization of the Study
This study is organized into five chapters. The first chapter provides an introduction to the issue of the lack of literature at examining the experiences and work-life balance of female adjunct instructors in community colleges. Chapter 1 also frames the purpose of the study, research questions, importance of study, the theoretical framework, and limitations and delimitations of the study. Chapter 2 will focus on the literature about community colleges, the role of adjunct instructors, and the work-life balance issues full-time female faculty members deal with in higher education, which will lay the foundation for the study to take place. Chapter
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3 will focus on the methodology of the study as well as explain how the data was collected and analyzed. Chapter 4 will summarize the methodology and Chapter 5 will present the findings, further recommendations for future study, and conclusions.
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Chapter 2: Review of the Literature
This chapter shares a review of the literature on women in higher education and the issues they face related to a work-life balance. The focus of this study is to examine the work- life balance of female adjunct instructors at community colleges; however, there is almost no literature that focuses on that topic. Therefore, this chapter begins with discussing the five overarching themes that come from the research questions, then an overview of community colleges, the role of the part-time adjunct employee, and the role of female adjunct faculty in community college. This chapter then examines the barriers and obstacles women in academia face as a full-time faculty member to obtain tenure and to maintain a fast track career. This chapter also examines the work-life balance of female faculty members across both academia and community colleges. This review also examines the life course theory as a theoretical framework that shapes the research for this study.
Themes of Interview Questions
The interviews that took place with female adjunct faculty focused on five overarching themes in a woman’s life. These themes are as follows:
Identity. The interviewee for this study was asked to reflect on how she views herself from Giele’s (2008) interview questions. With regards to identity, the interviewee addressed who she identifies herself as being like, as well as possibly mentioning her relationship status, employment status, economic difficulties, ethnic background, and how she is similar or dissimilar to her family members and their backgrounds. The interviewee might also explain some qualities that distinguish her as being a good mother, instructor, daughter, et cetera (Giele,
2008).
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Relational style. The interviewee was asked to reflect on her way of relating to others based off of Giele’s (2008) questions. The interviewee was also asked to reflect on if she views herself as a leader, follower, negotiator, or equal to fellow colleagues. This was hoped to lead her to think about her role as someone who possibly takes charge, is autonomous, or might be dependent on others for support and company. She was also asked about her relationship with her husband or extended family members, according to Giele.
Drive and motivation. Another area that Giele’s (2008) interview questions focus on are a woman’s need for achievement, affiliation, and power. The questions are tailored around discovering if a woman sees herself as relaxed and carefree or motivated and determined. These questions also ask a woman to think about if she is more focused on take care of her husband and children (or elderly parents, a partner, pet, etc.) than her own needs and if she mentions anything about wanting to enjoy life or having time for other things besides work (Giele, 2008).
Adaptive style. The final area of Giele’s (2008) interviews focus on a woman’s ability to adapt to a situation. These questions examine a woman’s energy level and if she’s someone who takes risks and embraces innovative ideas and new ways to do things, or if she’s uncomfortable with change and likes to maintain a routine. This area asks the interviewee to reflect on if she likes to work on multiple tasks at once or if she is happier maintaining a slower, more stress free pace (Giele, 2008).
Strategies for balancing life. The Digital Women’s Project (Weber, 2011) is a group of students pursuing their dissertation research who utilized Giele’s (2002) interview questions and the life course theory and then crafted an additional question to identify strategies for work-life balance. This area asks the interviewee to think about what coping strategies she has used in regards to any concerns about plural roles in the home. This section also has the interviewee
19 discussing whether she has felt it necessary to choose between work and home as well as whether either work or home life has suffered due to this balance. The interviewee also gave her strategies for any times she felt she successfully juggled the demands of home and working as an adjunct faculty members at a community college and how she remains balanced (Weber, 2011).
Community Colleges: Role and Reasons for Growth
Community colleges are public higher education institutions who typically award associate degrees and whose main focus is to serve a diverse body of students (Connelly &
Ghodsee, 2011; Townsend & Twonbly, 2007). Students who attend community colleges are typically earning 2-year associate’s degrees while often simultaneously working full-time and obtaining a degree (Connelly & Ghodsee, 2011). Community colleges generally focus more on teaching and learning instead of being heavily research-based like 4-year universities (Green &
Ciez-Volz, 2011; Townsend & Twonbly, 2007). Community colleges are also higher education institutions that have an open-door, open-access policy, which means that they serve academically underprepared and historically marginalized students, such as minorities and women, so they can have access to higher education (Cohen & Brawer, 2008; Townsend &
Twombly, 2007). Community colleges have goals to serve the community and to ensure than anyone who wants the opportunity for self-improvement is able to achieve that (Cross, 2013).
Students at these schools might not be as well-prepared for academic work, are usually first- generation college students, and they tend to come from working-class backgrounds (Connelly &
Ghodsee, 2011). When teaching at an institution such as a community college, it is expected that a teacher will teach well and not be expected to conduct research (Connelly & Ghodsee, 2011).
Community colleges are a piece of the multi-tiered higher education system and holds the role of either a training school or a junior college (Levin, 2007). However, as these institutions have
20 developed and grown, they have become more multi-faceted since they can now offer social services, adult education, community development, rehabilitation opportunities, and business training (Levin, 2007). There are even some community colleges that have expanded to offer bachelor’s degrees and also offer opportunities for severely physically and mentally impaired students (Levin, 2007). Community colleges can also be a place for those who have no wish to transfer or seek certification. Amey, VanDerLinder, and Brown (2002) found in their study that only 21% of those who enroll in community colleges actually have intent to transfer. The majority of students specified that they had decided to enroll in a community college to enrich themselves and to learn skills to gain promotion in their current field (Amey et al., 2002).
There was a large infiltration of soldiers after World War II who began attending colleges and universities due to tuition benefits from the government as well as the creation of the first federal student aid programs (Rudolph & Thelin, 1990; Thedwall, 2008). Community colleges were also a place that accommodated historically underrepresented students and gave these students, such as women, minorities, older students, part-time, and low-ability students, the ability to work toward a degree or simply obtain some higher education learning (Cohen &
Brawer, 2008). This shift in higher education accessibility caused student enrollment to grow
500% from 1945 to 1975 and created a dilemma in which administrators had to discover how to deal with the rising costs of institutions, maintain high standards for the institution, still offer classes to meet the high number of enrolled students, and financially stay in the black, which created a need to increase the amount of faculty members who would work part-time (Gappa,
Austin, & Trice, 2007; Thedwall, 2008).
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Community College Adjunct Faculty
The largest shift in higher education employments trends has been a greater use of contingent faculty members who typically only teach one to two classes at an institution per semester (Curtis & Jacobe, 2006). About 65 to 71% of instruction in higher education is done by adjunct (part-time faculty) and 2-year public colleges are one of the main institutions who utilize adjunct faculty members (American Federation of Teachers, 2009; Avakian, 1995; Cross, 2013;
Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2007; Jolley, Cross, & Bryant, 2014). An adjunct is defined as anyone who identifies as contingent faculty, non-tenure track faculty, lecturers, teaching assistants
(TA’s), part-timers, post docs, or non-senate faculty (American Association of University
Professors, 2011). As of 2011, part-time faculty account for half of all instructional staff and outnumber full-time faculty members (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2012).
It is believed that this dependence on part-time faculty results from critical budget cuts, overworked full-time instructors, and the flexibility for institutions to respond quickly to enrollment changes (Christensen, 2008; Umbach, 2007; Wickun & Stanley, 2000). Many institutions have had to deal with increasing student enrollment as well as higher budget cuts and these cuts left institutions with either the option to raise the price of admission or to cut costs
(Christensen, 2008; Gappa, 1984). Raising tuition at many colleges was not a practical solution since community colleges serve so many disadvantaged students and they deem it necessary to keep tuition prices far below what 4-year universities charge (Christensen, 2008). Staff is one of the principal categories for a community college’s budget, so the utilization of contingent faculty allows the college to make budget cuts since adjuncts make about 25% less than full-time faculty
(Christensen, 2008; Gappa, 1984). Adjuncts also do not receive any kind of annual salary increase like their full-time counterparts, so this continues to widen the gap between what part-
22 time and full-time faculty get paid (Wallin, 2004). This system also creates a high level of transiency and frustration for part-time faculty, but this system appeals to community college administrators due to the large amount of financial benefits it affords the institutions
(Christensen, 2008).
Part-time instructors have been favored as an alternate work force since they work for lower pay, could be hired or non-renewed quickly due to fluctuating enrollment, and needed little to no professional development (American Association of University Professors, 2003; Baldwin
& Chronister, 2001; Meyer, 1998). Part-time faculty members are also utilized within higher education because they are less expensive to hire and maintain, especially since there are no legal long-term obligations on the part of the institutions, and adjunct faculty members are typically contractors that are paid on a semester-by-semester basis. This means that contingent faculty members are not covered by the same procedures that apply to full-time faculty or staff in regards to hiring and firing (Dolan, Hall, Karlsson, & Martinak, 2013). Also, the amount of adjunct faculty has increased by more than 100% in the last three decades and typically adjuncts are used so heavily due to their flexibility to help with rapid enrollment, last-minute changes, night classes, and vocational and technical programs (American Federation of Teachers, 2009;
Avakian, 1995; Christensen, 2008; Jolley et al., 2014; Levin, 2007; Sophos, 2003; Umbach,
2007; Wallin, 2004). Within post-secondary education, community colleges employ about one- fifth of all instructors: about 68% are part-time members, and 100,000 are full-time faculty members (American Federation of Teachers, 2009; NCES, 2001). Donoughue (2008) states that
“though no university administrators talk candidly about it . . . Adjunct labor thus became a permanent feature of the academic landscape” (p. 25). Therefore, it is necessary to understand what non-tenure faculty experience since they make up the majority of instruction within higher
23 education (Kezar & Sam, 2010). Kezar and Sam (2010) warn that institutions can not continue focusing on tenured faculty as the main faculty of the academy since adjuncts are teaching the bulk of students within higher education and are an instrumental part of the teaching and learning environment for students.
Within community colleges, adjunct faculty has surpassed instructional staff by 70%.
According to these numbers, this means that about 70% of instructional staff in higher education have almost no job stability and about 43% of these adjuncts are female (American Association of University Professors, 2013; Avakian, 1995; Schuster & Finklestein, 2006). However, according to Jolley et al. (2014), there are very few studies that examine the experiences of the instructors who make up the majority of instruction in the United States.
Those who make up the part-time faculty at a college are typically very diverse and often have different reasons for employment (Christensen, 2008). Some adjuncts simply teach because they enjoy it and believe that teaching is very fulfilling while others bring practical experience and allow colleges to offer classes that require specialization (Christensen, 2008; Umbach, 2007;
Wagoner, Metcalfe, & Olaore, 2004). Some people become adjuncts because they have recently graduated from a graduate program and once they are not hired for a full-time position at a 4- year university, they may decide to work as an adjunct at a community college (Christensen,
2008). Wolfinger et al. (2009) point out that typically there only two types of adjuncts: those who decide to teach as their sole means of employment and those who have outside jobs and only teach one or two classes at a time. However, Jacoby (2006) reported that in his study, about
55.4% of the contingent faculty that were researched wanted full-time work but many never achieve full-time, tenured employment due to institutions restricting the amount of tenure track positions that are available (Jacoby, 2006; Thedwell, 2008). Full-time, tenure track positions are
24 thought of as the ideal academic position, but part-time, non-tenure track positions have now become the norm (American Federation of Teachers, 2009; Callan, 1997; Goldstein, 2005). A report was published in 2010 by the United States Department of Education in which they warned that tenure itself is on a decline due to the reliance United States universities and colleges have upon non-tenure track adjunct instructors, even though they frequently lack training and resoures (Jolley et al., 2014). In 1975, about 58% of faculty were hired for tenure-track positions whereas by 2000, about only 27% of newly hired instructors were for tenure-track positions
(Gravois, 2006).
Contingent faculty also make about 25% less than those on the tenure-track and it has been discovered that about half of all adjunct employees are working for more than 45-50 hours per week (Jacobs, 2004; Monks, 2007). Women are about twice as likely to hold a non-tenure track position as a man, and are also highly represented in part-time positions, especially within the liberal arts department (Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006). Contingent faculty members are considered second class citizens in just about every aspect and this represents the feminization of poverty since the majority of those adjuncts who are underpaid and undervalued are women
(Wolfinger et al., 2009).
Adjuncts typically have to hold advanced degrees to work in higher education and are usually qualified to hold a full-time teaching position; however, in order to earn enough money to live and to have any kind of access to benefits, adjunct instructors are usually forced to work at multiple community colleges and spend an excessive amount of time commuting from one institution to another (Allent, 2012; Avakian, 1995; Feldman and Turnley, 2004; Gappa, Austin,
& Trice, 2007; Mandelco, 2010). These adjunct faculty members are non-tenure track instructors who are frequently called “freeway flyers” due to their employment at multiple
25 institutions, and they are the fastest-growing area of employees in academia (Avakian, 1995).
Because many part-time faculty work at multiple campuses, they are typically not only overlooked in development opportunities and invitations to participate in meetings, but many adjunct faculty also feel very unsure of who or where to go for support (Rogers, McIntyre, &
Jazzer, 2010). Since many adjuncts are not given any kind of development opportunities, this can result in part-time faculty becoming academically stale because they are not expected to stay current within their field (Johnson, 2008). There are also few orientation programs for new part- time faculty and adjuncts are hardly ever instructed on any policies that the college might have, the proper way to create a syllabus, or personal development about teaching practices (Brewster
& Padavic, 2000; Wallin, 2004). Gappa and Leslie (1993) have also reported that contingent faculty members are an unseen category of instructors who typically go unrewarded and unrecognized. Many adjuncts have reported that they feel exploited or manipulated in relation to career aspirations and financial burdens (Avakian, 1995). Most new adjunct are also hired in
August at the beginning of the semester and this immediately sets them up for failure since there is not time for them to be given any basic training (Cassebaum, 1995; Christensen, 2008).
Adjuncts are also affected by the institution’s lack of incorporating them into the structure of the institute by not offering them office space, compensation for meeting with students, and a lack of access to computers, office phones, et cetera (Brewester & Padavic, 2000; Christensen, 2008;
Cross, 2013; Jolley et al., 2014). Adjunct faculty members are also usually dealing with time limitations, scheduling conflicts, and a lack of annual salary increases which has resulted in some full-time faculty accusing adjuncts of not participating in campus activities unless they are being compensated and being less committed to the college due to their temporary position on campus
(Avakian, 1995; Brewster & Padavic, 2000; Christensen, 2008; Wallin, 2004). Part-timers rarely
26 have the same status as full-time employees across all disciplines and fast-track professions, so ultimately some of their colleagues end up resenting part-timers because they are not always available and some full-time faculty may have to pick up another course or take on the added responsibilities that part-time faculty can not complete (Avakian, 1995; Mason & Ekman, 2007).
Part-timers can end up no longer being viewed as colleagues but as being a problem, so when it comes time to hire someone for the next step on the ladder, they are more likely to be passed up
(Mason & Ekman, 2007). However, most adjuncts say that they would like to be included in professional development opportunities and to be viewed as a valued member of the institution
(Brewester & Padavic, 2000; Cross, 2013; Foreman, 2008; Wallin, 2004).
Although part-time faculty members are the majority, they are given very few resources by their institutions and the college seems to be less committed to the adjunct faculty member than the adjunct faculty member is to the college (Christensen, 2008; Wallin, 2004). However, as Mahon (2008) explains, part-time faculty members aren’t outright discouraged to participate in meetings; they are typically just not asked or encouraged to attend. Utilizing adjunct faculty is perceived as a quick fix with the ability to offer more teaching for less money, but although adjuncts do help institutions with flexibility in staffing, this also produces an unreliable environment where adjuncts can be hired or let go within short notice since they are only contracted for work on a semester-to-semester basis (Christensen, 2008).
Many adjunct faculty teach on multiple campuses and this results in them carrying substantial teaching loads but without the support from other colleagues and administrators that tenure track faculty have. This causes many adjunct faculty to feel isolated and alone (Kezar,
2012). Adjuncts are also routinely given course loads which seem impossible to maintain and due to their part-time status, most adjuncts are not involved in curriculum development,
27 governance, or advisement and this can leave them feeling a lack of connection to the institution and can create a tendency for adjuncts to be transient (Avakian, 1995; Brewster & Padavic,
2000; Danley-Scott & Tompsett-Makin, 2013). However, Leslie and Gappa (2002) claim that the idea of contingent adjunct instructors as being freeway flyers and teaching at multiple institutions each semester is exaggerated by the media and they suggest that less than 20% of contingent faculty actually fall within that category.
Part-time adjunct positions pay about a quarter less than full-time, tenure track positions, and adjunct positions almost never include benefits like health insurance, sick leave, and parent paid leave. Additionally, with a lower pay, an adjunct may take on additional courses which leaves them with even less time for research and publication (Connelly & Ghodsee, 2011).
Many adjuncts feel exploited or manipulated, both financially and in relation to career aspirations, and many adjuncts feel as though they are just hired hands and would like to be viewed as a valued member of the academy (Avakian, 1995; Dolan et al., 2013). Foreman
(2008) found that how others within the institution view adjuncts actually has an effect on adjuncts’ self-esteem. Because of their temporary role on campuses, adjuncts are often viewed as being disinterested or uninterested of partaking in the institution, which can make it appear as those adjunct faculty members are less dedicated to the college than those who have full-time status (Avakian, 1995). Also, as the numbers in adjunct faculty increase, more pressure is placed on permanent, full-time faculty members to perform and meet the goals of the institution without help from adjunct faculty (Avakian, 1995).
Contingent faculty, such as adjunct instructors, might discover that after many years of schooling and the degrees they have obtained, their current positions are not meeting their expectations. This tends to affect the levels of bitterness and frustration by instructors in part-
28 time positions (Feldman & Turnley, 2004). Many adjuncts also teach about the same amount as full-time faculty, but not being eligible for benefits and being paid a significantly lower amount as their full-time counterparts make many adjuncts feel as though this financial inequity is at odds with the idea of academic freedom (Halcrow & Olson, 2008). Some part-time faculty members also might alter their teaching styles and try to increase students’ perceptions of them due to their shaky positions being appointed by student evaluations (Halcrow & Olson, 2008).
Schuetz (2002) found that according to a survey, contingent faculty members are less likely to utilize technology or multi-media instruction, are less likely to revise syllabi, and they spend less time prepping and working on lesson plans during their most current working day. However, it was also discovered that adjunct faculty spend about an hour outside of class with students, which is significant considering most adjuncts do not have access to offices, phones, or receive any type of payment for office hours (Grubb, 1999).
Adjunct faculty members are typically underpaid and overqualified, but since tenure- track faculty positions are extremely scarce, some see these positions as the only way to remain in the field or attached in any way to the scholarly environment (Mason & Ekman, 2007).
Although many part-timers will never become full-time faculty or participate in faculty committees, Townsend and Hauss (2002) found that over 50% of contingent faculty would prefer to continue teaching rather than quitting the profession. Also, Antony and Valadez (2002) discovered that “65% of part-time faculty would enter academe again if they were choosing their careers over again and less likely to leave their teaching position than full-time faculty” (p. 49).
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Female Community College Adjuncts
Community colleges are an area where women are highly represented, but one of the reasons for this is due to the high number of female adjunct instructors (Cross, 2013). Gappa
(2008) found the following:
In total, 60% of today’s 1,138,734 faculty members are in full-and part-time appointments outside the tenure system, and full-time, non-tenure-eligible faculty members are now one-third of the full-time faculty in all types of institutions, from 2- year colleges to research universities. (p. 50)
Leslie (1997) also discovered that “women faculty were substantially more likely to hold part-time or adjunct positions than were faculty men. Very nearly half of all women faculty were part-time, while close to two-thirds of male faculty were full-time” (p. 5). Women also represent about 58% of all college degree earners and women represent one third of community college presidencies and 45% of community college faculty (Drake, 2008; Townsend, 2008).
Since Congress passed an act called Title IX in 1972 that prohibited any bias or rejection on the basis of gender for any federally funded agency, there was a 147% increase of female administrators within the three decades that followed, whereas the amount of male administrators only went up 10% (National Education Association, 1998). This seems to suggest a warming environment for females within the higher education field. However, although women are procuring doctoral degrees at record rates and are highly represented on college campuses as students and part-time faculty, they are still very poorly represented in tenured faculty positions.
This is especially evident within research universities since only about 25% of women hold tenure track, full-time positions (West & Curtis, 2006). This disparity is less at community colleges where women comprise about 51% of full-time faculty, but this also means that women are the ones holding the majority of poorly compensated, insecure part-time positions: 53% at 2- year colleges, 54% at master’s institutions, and 52% at doctoral institutions (West & Curtis,
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2006). There is also an irony in the fact that just as women were becoming more educated and qualified to obtain tenure-track positions, the ability to hire tenure-track faculty began to diminish (Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006).
Some of the reasons why women are highly represented in community colleges is that unlike 4-year institutions that require doctorates, community colleges only require a master’s degree for employment. It has been discovered that community colleges tend to be more family- friendly and allow female faculty members to maintain a better work-life balance (Cohen &
Brawer, 2008; Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006). Women working with the community college system seemed to make it possible for female faculty members to achieve professional fulfillment without having to neglect personal goals such as having a family (Townsend, 1998).
There is also a perceived mommy track, which refers to female adjunct employees who typically have children and teach part-time; however, those teaching at community colleges reported still feeling the same anxiety to balance work and life as those teaching in academia (Wolf-Wendel et al., 2007; Wolfinger et al., 2009). Many women also stated that they had high levels of frustration by the inequalities of life at home, especially the “second shift,” which is typically the housework and childcare a woman does once at home after her official workday (Wolf-Wendel et al., 2007). This second shift is believed to be one of the main components as to why women are continuously underrepresented in faculty and university administrations such as president or chief financial officer, and also why academia is still largely male dominated. Although women make up the majority of faculty at community colleges, they are typically part-time employees and women are still coming in below half of all other areas of higher educations (Amey, 2002;
Djajadikerta & Triresksani, 2010; Park, 1996).
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Community colleges are believed to be a warmer climate for women because community colleges have historically served women and women have been integrated into the community college system longer than other higher education institutions such as research institutions (Frye,
1995). Armstrong (1999) also found that women do not typically hold leadership positions and seem to participate in committees that focus on less impactful topics such as curriculum development, while men seem to participate in committees that deal with tenure, policy, and planning decisions. This imbalance of committee representation can cause an imbalance which can result in a campus hierarchy where women are still feeling as thought their male colleagues have more power and influence (Lester & Lukas, 2008).
Research has shown that women who choose employment outside of the home are typically more happy and healthy than those women who do not (Halpern & Cheung, 2008).
There is lengthy documentation of higher-education literature that has focused on the struggle many women have faced when striving to balance work-life responsibilities (Armenti, 2004).
Therefore, many women have chosen to work within community colleges because they believe it affords them a more family-friendly schedule than working in academia and that although there are typically heavier teaching loads, the trade-off is worthwhile (Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006).
Many women also decide to work within community colleges because the college’s mission is to serve those that typically would not be eligible to enroll in other higher education institutions
(Cohen & Brawer, 2008; Everett, 2011).
Community colleges also tend to be a place where female faculty can take advantage of leadership opportunities in terms of governance and committee work more so than in academia
(Everett, 2011). It was discovered that there were comparable opportunities for both men and women faculty members within leadership and campus governance in the community college
32 field (Lester & Lukas, 2008). Townsend (2008) also suggests that since community colleges are an institution that typically has a greater amount of female students, female administrators, and female faculty members than any other higher education institutional type, it is believed that these institutions can provide a more fruitful environment for great female role models and leadership opportunities. Community colleges are also the only area within higher education where women are actually the ones who make up the majority of top administrative positions such as within college presidencies (King & Gomez, 2008). Therefore, it is believed that community colleges are more advantageous to the administrative ambitions of female faculty members than other higher education institutions (Everett, 2011; King & Gomez, 2008).
Cross (2013) found that community colleges do allow women an opportunity to get hired in the higher education field, but it has been discovered that they typically stifle the advancement and promotion of women because women’s roles within the community college are not equitable to the quality of roles that men have since the majority of women are employed in positions that lack access to basic resources, stability, benefits, and equitable pay. It is also hypothesized that women have historically worried more about integrating their professional and persona lives than men, so this can result in them having fewer expectations of fair treatment at work (Folger &
Greenberg, 1985; Heilman, Battle, Keller, & Lee, 1988). Due to a historical approach of striving to effectively integrate personal and professional lives, women might find part-time employment more beneficial since it can allow them more flexibility to balance their careers and personal lives (Feldman & Turnley, 2004).
However, researching women within the community college level is an area that has been severely overlooked within higher education literature (Wolgemuth et al., 2003). Wolf-Wendel,
Ward, and Twombly (2007) explain that there is relatively little information about how female
33 community college members are able to juggle family and work. This is a hugely understudied area since anything that does exist about females at community college is generally about the climate of community colleges for female faculty. There is a severe lack of literature on the difficulties that women face when having children early in their career while also working at a community college (Wolf-Wendel et al., 2007).
Tenure
Tenure is intended to guarantee the right to academic freedom and to protect faculty members with new or unorthodox lines of research or teaching. The American Association of
University Professors (AAUP) established it in 1940 and it allows faculty members to teach and research what they are passionate about as well as the ability to fully participate in policy making and campus governance without the fear of losing their jobs (Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2012).
Many believe that tenure helps an institution attract the best individuals and helps to compensate for the low pay often given to faculty members as compared to other occupations such as those who work in medicine or law (Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2012). Some critique tenure, though, because it can cost an institution over 2 million dollars per faculty member over the course of a
30-year career (Taylor, 2010). Others think that tenure prevents institutions from being flexible and might protect individuals who are no longer productive members of the institution (Ward &
Wolf-Wendel, 2012).
Female tenure at community colleges. Wolf-Wendel and Ward (2006) discovered that full-time faculty at community colleges generally experience a work environment that does not allow much flexibility and autonomy due to the heavy course loads and required office hours.
Full-time faculty generally experienced a controlled environment when it came to work and family, but most taught between 24 to 32 credit hours per contracted year, and most were
34 required to be on campus about 35 hours a week which included office hours, advising, teaching, and providing service to the institution and department (Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006). There is a 3-year probationary period for full-time community college faculty and tenure is mostly based off of classroom performance (Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006).
Unlike those in academia, earning tenure at a community college was typically not an area of extreme concern for those interviewed in Wolf-Wendel and Ward’s (2006) study. Most faculty believed they would be granted tenure due to being a competent and good teacher.
However, some women did face trepidation about the effect having a baby might have on eventually earning tenure (Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006).
Maternity-related policies in community colleges. In Wolf-Wendel and Ward’s (2006) study, they found that there was no paid maternity leave offered to female faculty; about half of the women in the study explained that their main option was to take an unpaid leave through the
U.S. Department of Labor’s Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). According to the U.S.
Department of Labor (2015):
the FMLA entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reason with continuation of group health insurance coverage under the same terms and conditions as if the employee had not taken leave. Eligible employees are entitled to 12 workweeks of leave in a 12-month period. (para. 1)
And about half of the women also spoke out about having to use sick leave, catastrophic illness leave, or disability leave in order to take time off to have a baby (Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006).
Some faculty also mentioned that an unspoken understanding among the department was that women should have a baby during the semester break or during summer since there was no workable institutional policy in place for them (Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006).
Interestingly, the use of sick leave was more unsettling for probationary faculty at community colleges, because women seemed to worry about the affect using sick leave would
35 have on their tenure probation than they were about having to use sick leave as parental leave
(Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006). Wolf-Wendel and Ward (2006) noted that although many campuses are unionized, very few faculty members spoke about the role unions had in addressing any work/family concerns. Besides concerns about the need for maternity leave, faculty within community colleges said that policies needed to be implemented for both childcare and support for breastfeeding mothers (Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006).
Female tenure in academia in general. Since there is so little reported on the experience of females in community colleges, literature featuring women in academia was reviewed. Historically, women are promoted and tenured at a slower pace, less often, and often paid less than male instructors (Bentley & Blackburn, 1992; Moore & Sagaria, 1993; Nettles et al., 2000; Perna, 2001b). Also, female faculty members are eventually more likely to look for non-academic careers since working in academia is not as prestigious or attractive as it once was
(Tack & Patitu, 1992). The tenure process requires long hours and poor pay as well as the challenge of being able to balance personal and professional lives. This results in many female graduate students and women faculty having serious issues with considering academic careers.
Rausch Ortiz, Douthitt, and Reed (1989) and Rothblum (1988) likewise discovered that women were twice as likely to voluntarily depart a tenure review than men, which suggests that tenure status and the process may be one of the reasons the attrition rates both pre and post tenure from the academy are so high (Menges & Exum, 1983; Rausch et al., 1989; Rothblum, 1988).
Wolfinger, Mason, and Goulden, (2004) found that:
In the first year out from the PhD program, the high-water mark of tenure-track job entry, 16% of married men with children under 6 and 16% of single women without children under 6 are expected to enter a tenure-track. In contrast, only 13% of married women without children under 6 and a paltry 10% of married women with children under 6 are predicted to do so. Thus, married men with children under 6 are 50% more likely than married women with children under 6 to join the rank of tenure-track faculty in the first
36
year out from the Ph.D . . . Because single women without children under 6 do as well as married men with children under 6, family formation completely explains why women are overall less likely than men to enter tenure-track positions. (pp. 11-12)
This gives a clear message that when women combine babies and marriage, this considerably decreases their probability of entering into a tenure-track faculty position (Mason et al., 2013).
Interestingly enough, once women began tenure-track jobs, family formations were no longer an explanation of their decreased probability of gaining tenure and it was discovered that regardless of family status, men were more likely to obtain tenure than women (Wolfinger et al., 2004).
There is a large issue in academia with females lacking tenure, and there is a belief that women may feel excluded or isolated from information to learn about the tenure process due to the patriarchal nature of academia and feeling excluded professionally as not part of the academic network (Aluko, 2009; Mandelco, 2010). Some other reasons that have accounted for the deficiency of women tenured within higher education may be due to female faculty feeling marginalized due to issues with gender discrimination and experiencing sexual harassment.
According to Carr et al. (2000), when surveyed, a substantially higher amount of women rather than men who held academic appointment explained that they had faced gender discrimination and sexual harassment. The historically male-dominated world of academia also contributes to the issue of women feeling excluded professionally and within the university’s network, which also excludes them from the information which can help lead them to understand the tenure process (Aluko, 2009). Some women might not be aware of the tenure criteria or think of the criteria as too vague or difficult to understand (Philipsen & Bostic, 2008). There also might be political undercurrents within an institution’s department that might make it problematic for women to seek out the necessary information to understand the necessary steps required to achieve tenure status (Mandelco, 2010). It is also believed that women tend to be judged against
37 male norms within higher education and that women are expected to perform nurturing roles by participating in roles that support the more emotional health of colleagues and students (Eddy &
Cox, 2008; Lester, 2008; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996). This type of emotional work benefits the organization but typically does not benefit the careers of women because it further creates a gender role imbalance and tends to hinder the advancement of female academicians’ careers
(Lester, 2008).
Another reason men seem to achieve tenure at a quicker and higher rate than women is that many women work as contingent faculty (Langan & Morton, 2009; Wolfinger et al., 2009). This might result in them having higher teaching loads and fewer chances to do research when compared to their male counterparts (Mandelco, 2010). Women in academia are typically also dealing with non-academic matters such as family obligations involving a spouse and/or children
(Mandelco, 2010). This can make it difficult for a woman to obtain the tenure criteria required and it can also impede with necessary writing, finishing research projects, traveling for work related opportunities, and attending conferences (Aluko, 2009; Ceci & Williams, 2010; Mason &
Goulden, 2004; Price et al., 2009; Sakamoto et al., 2008). Currie, Harris, and Thiele (2000) argue that the academy has been deemed a greedy institution due to the excessive demands it places on women and can cause conflicts between motherhood and academia. Female academicians tend to continue the same home responsibilities even after achieving an academic career which requires them to spend more time with family responsibilities and taking care of children as well as household chores (Mandelco, 2010).
Although a record amount of women are entering graduate and professional schools and there is equity among females and males at the beginning of their careers, there is a strong male dominance at the end of the career path and a lack of females reaching the top of their
38 professions. This is still the norm in the university realm and is also the pattern within law, medicine, and the corporate world (Mason & Ekman, 2007). Although nearly half of all doctorates are being earned by women, they are still more probable than their male colleagues to specialize in areas that lead to lower paying jobs, to work part-time, to occupy less prestigious positions, and to have shorter careers (Mason et al., 2013). Although women are obtaining degrees and meet the qualifications for academia, they are still not faring any better among gender equity than women in the general labor force since they are still highly underrepresented in most disciplines, are less likely to acquire a tenure-track position, receive equivalent salaries, be approved for tenure, and achieve full professorships (Moore & Sagaria, 1993). Men are still more likely to be hired in more esteemed disciplines and hired at more privileged institutions than women (August & Waltman, 2004).
Make or break years. There is a time period between the ages of 30 and 40 that is believed to be the make or break years. This is when the maximum demand happens for workers at the commencement of a fast track career and is the time that can lead to tenure, partnership, or
CEO. This is also a time period women have to decide if they can manage the demands of their career as well as having a child. These are also typically the last years a woman has to become a mother. It seems that the biological clock and the career clock are at war against one another, and this is typically the time that many women drop out of the fast track and these are also the years when the most babies are born (Mason & Ekman, 2007; Mason et al., 2013). Those who are able to thrive and be successful during the make-or-break years are typically men that are married with children because it is still expected for women to take care of home-life (Mason &
Ekman, 2007). Women who are mothers that make it through the make-or-break years typically make it past the first glass ceiling to senior positions, but few make it to the second glass ceiling:
39 the positions of greatest power and influence. The women who are making it to the top has increased, but is not proportionate to the amount of women who have entered the professional arena (Mason & Ekman, 2007).
Motherhood in Academia
Women working in academia today try to plan the timing of their children to make sure it doesn’t conflict with the academic calendar year, which results in “May babies” (Acker &
Armenti, 2004; Armenti, 2004). Many women in Acker and Armenti’s (2004) study explained that female academicians planned to have babies in May or June because this is a time when institutions are on a semester break and would not require a woman to take time off. Other women worked to stabilize their careers before having children so that they would not have the double stress of having children while also establishing a career. Others reported being discouraged wholeheartedly to have any children at all, and all women explained that balancing the requirements of a career and children posed day-to-day stresses (Acker & Armenti, 2004;
Leonard & Malina, 1994; Raddon, 2002; Wajcman & Martin, 2002). Women today are not expected to interrupt their careers by staying at home with children when the children are young, but they also are not confronting problems that older women spoke of about no maternity leave or having to result in scheduling a May baby (Acker & Armenti, 2004). However, these same women seem exhausted and unsettled by trying to keep up with the heavy demand of caring for children and balancing academic standards (Acker & Armenti, 2004).
Mason and Ekman (2007) found that “in 1970, 73% of college-educated women had their first baby by 30, while in 2000, only 36% did so in that time frame” (p. 4). It is believed that this has resulted in women today having more opportunities to participate in the workforce as well as a greater necessity for women to participate in the workplace; however, women who decide to go
40 into fields that required advanced degrees or training must decide to postpose plans to have children or not have them at all (Mason & Ekman, 2007). Academic women tend to have fewer children than female doctors or lawyers. Also, only one out of three women who take a tenure- track position at a university before having a child actually ends up becoming a mother, which lends to the belief that the academy is less family friendly than other professions (Mason et al.,
2013).
Mommy track and the second tier. Most women get off the fast track when they take breaks for family needs and then become caught up in a second tier career when they return to work. These positions are typically part-time, but can also be full-time, and are generally of a lower status and pay (Mason & Ekman, 2007). Women flock to these second tier career paths after spending so much time in education and internships and then discovering a workplace where sacrifices to family become more difficult to maintain and there are few models of successful women. Therefore, this default mommy track becomes a safe place to enter and covers a wide range of jobs within positions that have reduced hours to part-time lecturers with no security or benefits (Mason & Ekman, 2007). These jobs are typically undervalued, insecure, and underpaid, and what they usually have in common is that women are the majority represented in them. There is also typically a lack of a track to the top (Mason & Ekman, 2007).
The first woman president of Princeton, Shirley Tilghman, advised that the tenure system should be dropped since it makes huge demands on a woman at a time when she is already stressed out with a young family (Mason & Ekman, 2007). Predominately female professions such as secondary education teachers, nursing, and social work positions often offer lower pay and status than male-dominated professions such as corporate management, medical practice, and law.
However, there is a new emergence of the second tier in these previously male-dominated
41 professions and within these seemingly gender-equal professions, women are being segregated into a reduced hour, underpaid second tier (Mason & Ekman, 2007). These shifts are remaking professions and in higher education, the U.S. Department of Education reported that part-time faculty (or adjuncts) taught 40% of all online courses. At about the same time, law firms began consolidating into practices of 100 partners or more and HMOs began offering solo physicians salaried positions (Mason & Ekman, 2007). The idea of the old model where just a small amount of skilled professionals with a very limited support staff are what make up high-status professions is being replaced by a much more corporate model (Mason & Ekman, 2007). This new structure is like a pyramid with a few executives dictating to a very large middle management group. This middle management group then dictates to an even bigger body of support workers who typically work at highly reduced costs and represent the second tier. In one way, the second tier is a practical solution to the work-life balance issue (Mason & Ekman,
2007). For many women, it offers a compromise of remaining working and involved with a career, but also allows the time and flexibility to raise a family. However, the argument also becomes that many women initially downshift to the second tier with the belief that they will be able to get back on the fast track someday, whereas this is rarely the case (Mason & Ekman,
2007).
Second shift. The second shift is something that all mothers do because they work at their job and then come home to children and household duties. In both moderate and lower- income families, women do much of the routine and daily indoor household tasks and domestic work, whereas men do more of the occasional outside work such as maintenance on the house and the car (Baxter, Hewitt, & Haynes, 2008). Research has also found that unsupportive partners can create a barrier to a woman’s success, and in a work-life policy study on highly
42 qualified women, it found that 40% of married responders said they felt as if their spouses created more work around the home than they performed. A career that is going extremely well can be crushed by a draining second shift at home which can also be made worse by a partner who doesn’t contribute to the housework or does not value his wife’s career and goals (Mason &
Ekman, 2007).
Strategies for working mothers. Successful mothers typically explain that they have an ambitious nature, have physical stamina, and also say that they are just lucky (Mason & Ekman,
2007). It is also often necessary to have a supportive partner, supportive network of family and friends, and great time management skills (Mason & Ekman, 2007). Women juggling both careers and motherhood almost always worried that they were not spending enough time with their children and experienced some sense of remorse or “mother’s guilt” throughout their careers. However, they recommended some ways to control this mother’s guilt in order to be successful such as knowing when to say no and using time management skills (Mason & Ekman,
2007). And some successful mothers have recognized that neither working or parenting can be done perfectly, so these women become used to being the best at whatever they do but also settling for less than perfection when need be (Mason & Ekman, 2007). As children grow older, the demands on their mothers’ time changes, so those women who have a long-term perspective on mother’s guilt are more likely to stay the course of their career and success (Mason & Ekman,
2007). Senator Diane Feinstein has also pointed out that burnout is a dangerous issue that can affect a woman’s success. She advises that a woman needs to listen to herself and pace herself so that she doesn’t wear out. It is also recommended for women to recognize that there is a light at the end of the tunnel after the make-or-break years are over (Mason & Ekman, 2007).
However, a common theme found by the women in Acker and Armenti’s (2004) study was that
43 when trying to build an academic career and raising young children, there are high levels of stress, sleeplessness, and exhaustion. When looking at how women cope with all these different areas in their lives, it was discovered in Bagilhole’s (1994) study of British female academics that women just had to continue working harder.
Another area of interest is how well women respond to the struggles within their lives and how to balance both work and family life. Bagilhole (1994) found that female academics in
Britain identified some successful strategies such as collective action, identifying with male rather than female professionals, and just working harder. The women in Acker and Armenti’s
(2004) study seemed to embrace at least the first strategy of Bagilhole’s (1994) study because most women’s primary approach was just to work longer and harder. The older norms that are associated with family and childcare are still very present in today’s world and operate in such a way that make it challenging to be both a faculty member and a mother (Acker & Armenti,
2004).
Work-life balance for women in academia. The challenge to combine work and family in the United States is even higher than in almost any other industrialized country. Americans work longer hours, have very high parenting standards, and inhabit a highly individualistic culture that sees child rearing as a private responsibility (Connelly & Ghodsee, 2011). Female faculty members also report that it is more difficult to balance family duties with the time constraints that come along with maintaining a professional career than their male colleagues.
This also often puts them at a handicap within their departments (Aisenberg & Harrington, 1988;
Riger, Stokes, Raja, & Sullivan, 1997). Issues with time as well as quality of life are both areas of work-life balance issues that lead to more women leaving their professional position than men
(Johnsrud & Heck, 1994).
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It has been found that professors are typically working more than 50 hours a week and throughout the work week, faculty have to balance many tasks such as research, mentoring, and service (Jacobs & Winslow, 2004). Faculty deal with many pressures since they are juggling many responsibilities; therefore, the work-life issue exists for all faculty, regardless of gender, since childcare, housework, personal lives, and elder care have to be maintained even with a challenging professional career (Acker & Feuerverger, 1996). According to the American
Association of University Professors (2011), since there is such a lack of clear boundaries in academic life between family and work, this means that work has typically become all- consuming and is often done to the harm of the family.
Academic careers typically follow the structure of a traditional model whose worker has flexibility of time since they usually have a spouse at home to take care of domestic duties
(Coltrane, 2004; Grant, Kennelly, & Ward, 2000). This male-centered structure makes it extremely difficult for female professors. Typically, women who are in tenure-track positions are less likely to take a long maternity leave or stop the tenure clock. Most women are afraid that they will be perceived as less serious about their careers as their male colleagues (Drago et al., 2006). The struggle to discover a way to balance work and family responsibilities were also found to be major areas of stress during a woman’s academic career with little to no support from her institution to help her manage the situation (Aluko, 2009; Drago et al., 2006; Mandelco,
2010, O’Laughlin & Bischoff, 2005).
Becker (1991) found that married women pursued part-time positions because they were less demanding and still afforded women the ability to manage household responsibilities, which leads to occupational segregation by gender. Life-style stressors, or pull factors, such as child care, parent care, physical and mental health, are likely to affect women more than men due to
45 the societal expectations placed on women, and women are more likely to feel greater stress and pressure to maintain a work-life balance (Austin & Pilat, 1990; Schneider et al., 2011; Tack &
Patitu, 1992). It was also discovered that among tenure-track and tenured faculty, over 70% of the women studied believed that after the birth of a child, it would be destructive to their career to take time off (Finkel, Olswang, & She, 1994).
Since the mid-70s, there has been a significant growth of female faculty represented within colleges and universities, but the most growth has been found in non tenure-track positions
(Chronister, Gansneder, Harper, & Baldwin, 1997; Lomperis, 1990). Schneider et al. (2011) found that academia is still a mostly male-dominated field and that although there has been minimal progress, female professors are still outnumbered by males. This is of concern since
Schneider et al. (2011) found that women made up:
46.8 % of the total U.S. labor force in 2009, yet only 42% held full-time faculty positions in all U.S. higher education institutions. For universities overall, 90% of full professors in science and engineering are male, as are 75% of full professors at research universities. An examination at the micro level of all 4-year institutions shows only 21% of faculty members are women with 19.9% at private institutions and 27% at public colleges or universities. Women also tend to hold positions at lower academic ranks. (p. 1)
The issue of balancing life and work affect both men and women; however, women both on and off the tenure track path find that due to the lack of flexibility within their careers, it is more challenging to bear and raise children (Armenti, 2004; Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2007; Glazer-
Raymo, 1999; Mason & Goulden, 2002; Ropers-Huilman, 2000; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2004).
Others have shown that careers in academia are not designed to accommodate the role of mother, wife, and caretaker (Astin & Milem, 1997; Morrison, Rudd, & Nerad, 2011).
Mason and Goulden (2004) created a study where male and female UC tenure-track faculty across the nine University of California campuses were asked how many hours a week they spend on domestic, professional, and caregiving activities.
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It was found that “mothers with children in the household reported working 94 hours a week, 27 on caregiving, while fathers work 82 hours per week; 20 hours on caregiving” (Mason &
Goulden, 2004, p. 86). Hochschild (1997) has reported that women with small children are even more likely to experience a time bind within balancing work and life.
Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) explain that there is this perception of conflict between balancing activities because there is an assumption that “time spent on activities within one role generally cannot be devoted to activities within another role” (p. 77). Work-family scholars typically explain balance as being the opposite of work/family conflict, and the term usually includes being equally satisfied and involved with work-family roles (Greenhaus & Singh,
2003). Rapoport, Bailyn, Fletcher, and Pruitt (2002) believe that not every person needs or wants the same personal and professional balance, so they believe in an integration of the two and define this as finding satisfaction and function in both personal life and work, regardless of how much time a person actually spends in either area.
Another area of concern is the shrinking interconnected atmosphere on college campuses due to the higher number of transient workers, such as adjunct professors. This seems to affect women the most because women typically place higher value on connecting with others as well as the importance of mentoring as a way for women to obtain success in their careers (Astin &
Davis, 1993; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996). Many researchers have recounted that a major contribution to faculty satisfaction is having a sense of community with colleagues (Astin, 1991;
Boice, 1993; Fox, 1991; Johnsrud & Wunsch, 1991; Olsen, Maple, & Stage, 1995; Olsen &
Sorcinelli, 1992; Riger et al., 1997). Typically, female faculty members find their institution’s departments to be chilly and challenging conditions. Women often feel unwelcome and isolated in male networks and getting less support and information about tenure from senior colleague
47 and chairpersons (Astin, 1991; Boice, 1993; Fox, 1991; Johnsrud & Wunsch, 1991; Olsen et al.,
1995; Olsen & Sorcinelli, 1992; Riger et al., 1997).
Perna (2001a, 2001b, 2005) has also found that men hold more higher-ranking positions than women. A study that took place in the mid-1990s showed obstacles that are still present for women in academia such as home/work conflicts, stress, fatigue and evaluation anxiety (Acker
& Armenti, 2004). In Santos’ (2015) study, she discovered that women’s career are continuing to being molded by family choices and women are still more likely to be depicted as the primary child caretaker over time
In Acker and Armenti’s (2004) research, the older women studied, specifically those in their late 40s through early 60s, did not seem to have any major worries about balancing children, home, and work. However, it is also assumed that in the past, these same women did not have the same policies or expectations as women today such as maternity leave, and they managed without it.
Work-life balance for women in community colleges. Although many 4-year universities are implementing work-life balance policies, they still are not as common at community colleges (Sallee, 2008). The conflict that is created between balancing family demands and a career are still one of the main reasons that there is such a plethora of women employed in non-tenure track positions (Bronstein, Rothblum, & Solomon, 1993). It is believed that working at a community college is a beneficial position for women and those striving to maintain a work-life balance because if research is not a requirement, then it is perceived that a person will have more time for family (Clark, 1987). However, since community colleges place higher importance on teaching, community college faculty members reside on the margins of all faculty within higher education due to fewer opportunities for research and specialization (Clark,
48
1987). And this temporary position lacks the security of a full-time professor and is overpopulated with women, especially those who have children, because an increasing amount of mothers will take the jobs (Connelly & Ghodsee, 2011).
Although both men and women strive to maintain a work-life balance, women are typically burdened heavier with raising children and performing household duties than men
(Sallee, 2008). It was also found that although women spend about the same amount of time on professional responsibilities as men do, women are spending almost twice as much time with their children than men are (Sallee, 2008). And just as childcare falls to women, so does eldercare (Doress-Worters, 1994).
Community college faculty’s duties are primarily comprised of teaching and these instructors spend about 89% of their time at work on responsibilities related to teaching
(National Center for Education Statistics, 2005). Although it may be fulfilling to teach, teaching places high demands and stress on faculty members, especially those trying to maintain a good work-life balance between their professional and personal lives (Townsend & LaPaglia, 2000;
Wolf-Wendel, Ward, & Twombly, 2007). However, despite the difficulties of teaching, Wolf-
Wendel et al. (2007) found that most community college faculty were satisfied and found a balance between teaching and raising a family and also felt a connection with their students since maintaining a work-life balance is also an issue that many of their students also struggle with
(Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2004).
Gender Equality in the Workplace
This section discusses persisting gender issues in the work place: the challenge of finding professional mentors, the glass ceiling, the gains and limitations of the feminist movement, and the difficult choices women still must make regarding career and home life.
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Mentoring. Mentoring is an important part of career satisfaction but is often much more difficult for women than male faculty members to create (August & Waltman, 2004). Women reported that they were still able to be successful even without mentoring, they also felt as if they were less productive with their work, less connected to peers, less able to develop professionally, and less connected to the university community (Waltman, 2001). Good mentoring includes having a role model for work-related influences, inspiration, having encouragements, affirmation and someone to instill confidence (Anderson & Ramey, 1990; Cullen & Luna, 1993; Nye, 1997).
And it was extremely important for many women to have mentors who encouraged them during the critical child-rearing years (Mason & Ekman, 2007).
Glass ceiling. The glass ceiling is a term coined from the Wall Street Journal to explain difficulties that apparently thwart women from climbing the top of a corporate ladder (Mason &
Ekman, 2007). By 1995, it was:
reported that women had 45.7% of America’s jobs and received more than half of university master’s degrees. Yet 95% of senior managers were men, and female managers’ earnings were on average a scant 68% of their male counterparts’. A decade later, women account for 46.5% of America’s workforce and represent less than 8% of its top managers . . . female managers’ earnings now average 72% of their male colleagues’ wages. (Mason & Ekman, 2007, p. 112)
The path is not promising and in some professions, the top leadership positions are often described as the second glass ceiling because although many women have achieved powerful positions that used to be beyond their grasp, many more have failed to reach the peak leadership positions (Mason & Ekman, 2007).
According to Williams (2005), there are two major factors that limit a woman’s possibility for success in the academy: the glass ceiling, which applies to all women, and the maternal wall, which applies to mothers. Williams (2005) argues that the maternal wall and the
50 glass ceiling reinforce each other by creating a range of barriers that women must overcome if they are to obtain tenure.
The feminist movement. The feminist movement in the 1960s pushed for gender equality so that women could break through male-dominated professions like medicine, law, and the corporate world, which would also allow them to break through the glass ceiling (Mason &
Ekman, 2007). These social changes have both exemplified and reinforced women’s monetary and personal needs to break out of traditional domestic roles (Baker, 2002). More women are entering and remaining in the labor force after motherhood and women’s earnings have become a necessity to households as the cost of living increases, more couples are separating, and the job market becomes even more competitive (Baker, 2002).
However, true gender equality would only happen if it included both home and the workplace, which would result in both women and men needing to share in domestic duties such as child rearing and housework (Mason & Ekman, 2007). Although women are being encouraged to compete on the fast track, there needs to be changes to accommodate families and children, and men also need to have changes made for them as well so that they can also spend time with their families (Mason & Ekman, 2007). Women who attend college today have more career options due to the door opened to them by the civil rights legislation “Title VII, which forbids gender discrimination in the workplace, Title IX which insists on gender equality in education, and the women’s movement, which fought to enforce these new laws” (Mason &
Ekman, 2007, p. 31). However, for the last 30 years the idea of equality in education and the workplace has been discussed so frequently that today’s young women almost believe that they are no longer facing issues of gender discrimination (Mason & Ekman, 2007).
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Choices. Women today have many choices to make. They have to decide whether to have children and remain on their career track, to drop out or drop down the career ladder, or to refrain from motherhood at all. However, this is not something new just for modern women.
Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist, explains that each generation of 20th century women has perceived this so-called choice somewhat differently. Women have followed five different patterns, each one controlled by historical events. Women who graduated from college between
1900 and 1920 were the first generation to obtain higher education in any kind of significant number. These women had to decide to either work or have a family, but not to have both.
Those who chose careers went into the field of teaching, social work, and as librarians. 30% of those women did not marry and 50% did not have children (Mason & Ekman, 2007). However, this was also the generation that produced suffrage leaders and social reformers. The next generation was those that graduated college from 1920 and 1945 who chose a job first and then family. These jobs were only meant to last temporarily and not intended to be lifetime careers because they were to give up their jobs when they had children. These are also the same women who experienced economic hardships like the Great Depression and the turmoil of World War II
(Mason & Ekman, 2007). Only 15 to 20% did not marry, and the majority (60-65%) had children. Those who graduated in 1945 to 1965 were the most domestic and fertile of generations and these women were much more likely than their mothers or grandmothers to marry early and have multiple children. Only 8% never married and 83% had children. Some of these women found part-time employment after their children had grown up, but they rarely had a career (Mason & Ekman, 2007). The baby boomers came next as the generation that graduated from college between 1965 and 1985 and they chose career first, then a family, and this was also the generation that opened the door to careers only experienced by a few of their mothers,
52 grandmothers or even great-grandmothers. These women married later in life and 28% never had children (Mason & Ekman, 2007). The generation who graduated from the 1980s to the
1990s focused on career and family and were able to achieve both things only slightly better than their mother had been able to. However, their experiences are still taking place (Mason &
Ekman, 2007).
Life Course Theory
Studying the lives of others over an expanded amount of time became prominent in the
1950s and has now extended across disciplines such as social, behavior, and biological sciences
(Elder & Giele, 2009). Thinking about people’s lives, relationships, and society identified with life course concepts (Elder, Johnson, & Crosnoe, 2003). Looking at people’s life transitions and pathways showed what people thought were the social definitions of age status, normative divisions of the life course by looking at both adolescence and young adulthood, and age norms
(Elder & Giele, 2009). Elder (1974) explains “according to theory, age expectations define appropriate times for major life events and transitions. In moving through the age structure, individuals are made cognizant of being early, on time, or late in role performance” (p. 175).
Another aspect of this theory connects the constraints of relationships to significant others because social entrenchment through relationships and age become the primary aspects of a developing life course perception (Elder & Giele, 2009). Elder used the observations of people’s transitions, such as entering first grade and graduation, as part of a life trajectory that gives them meaning (Elder & Giele, 2009).
Giele also became interested in how social system requirements are connected with individual motives and goals through the social structure. She looks at not only how an environment can shape a person but also how people intentionally try to change their own
53 situation as well as the larger society (Elder & Giele, 2009). Giele also found that life course changes and feminist activity are multi-directional and that a shift toward women holding multiple roles has evolved among women born since the 1930s (Elder & Giele, 2009). A life course theory implies that those who have similarities in education, age, race, and economic positions might end up having different attitudes, values, or personal characteristics that add to their desire to be a homework or seek out a career (Elder, 1994, 1998; Giele, 2002). The utilization of a life course method allows a context to discover how individuals with a minority or lower status can adapt and insert themselves into a majority status.
The life course theory also observes different pathways and trajectories that people select.
It has been found that role obligations, such as responsibilities and actions, changed with age since the obligation of a parent changes as a child grows up. Role sets are also very important and these are characterized by the following:
role acquisition (e.g., becoming married, becoming a parent) . . . role relinquishment and role obligation change (e.g., becoming divorced, becoming a widow or widower, caretaking for an aging parent) . . . Achieving a positive level of work-life balance was easier” for those whose parent role had become less demanding and there were no overt differences between faculty members with full-time or part-time statuses. (Latz & Rediger, 2013, p. 282)
Another important factor in the construction of a work-life balance for people was tenure or the time spent in a position and Latz and Rediger (2013) found that it was very difficult to maintain a good work-life balance for those who were early on in their careers to acclimate to faculty life
(Latz & Rediger, 2013).
The life course theory utilizes life stories that come about in various ways such as interviews, autobiographies, memoirs, historical accounts, and oral histories (Elder & Giele,
2009). Through these narratives, there is a connection to personal origins and individuals outcomes as a person maneuvers through thick and thin to emerge as a unique individual that has
54 been shaped by the culture of origin and social forces (Elder & Giele, 2009). McAdams,
Josselson, and Lieblich (2001) explains that a life story is co-authored by the person as well as the cultural and social context in which that person’s life is rooted. Since a life story has a past, present, and future, it is able to link between external situations and internal feelings and shows the subject as a person who is able to adapt to an environment and maneuver one way or the other due to internal and external forces (Elder & Giele, 2009). The life story is also an autobiographical story that allows the subject to tell a structured identity that comes close to the concept of identity (Elder & Giele, 2009).
In the life course field, the emerging paradigm for describing the individual’s behavioral system includes four main factors: “identity, relational style, motivation, and adaptive style”
(Elder & Giele, 2009, p. 246). Identity is connected with a person’s birth and space and time within a society. Relational style is shaped by social networks and loyalties. Personal agency reflects the individual’s motivation and goals. Adaptive style shows the modifications and changes a person learns to negotiate while also living through life transitions and condition changes (Elder & Giele, 2009; See Figure 1).
Summary
A review of the literature reveals the difficulties women are still facing in academia and within the realm of the community college to break through from the highly represented female part-time employee to a position of power and stability in a full-time tenured position. Although much has been written about the plight of women in academia as well as the difficulties women are facing with maintaining a work-life balance, there is a void in the research regarding the work-life balance of female adjunct employees at the community college level. This study seeks
55 to utilize the theoretical framework of the life course theory to give a voice to this highly unrepresented minority and to discover how they are balancing their lives and work.
Relational Style
Life Drive and Identity Course Motivation Theory
Adaptive Style
Figure 1. Life course theory and the four theoretical concepts.
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Chapter 3: Methodology
This qualitative, phenomenological study sought to discover the lived experiences of female part-time instructors at Southern California community colleges and how they maintain a work-life balance. The literature featuring the female instructor’s work-life balance is typically skewed to only examine full-time faculty, typically those who are employed at a 4-year institution.
The literature regarding the experiences of female adjunct instructors is very limited and normally only views the adjunct experience as a whole rather than distinguishing the work-life balance of female part-time instructors. There had been no studies prior to this that utilized the qualitative life story method to discover the experiences and coping strategies that make-up a female adjunct instructor’s life as she works to balance a home and work life.
This is a qualitative study because this approach utilizes “exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem” (Creswell, 2014, p. 4).
This process involved building themes from the data given by the participants and the researcher, interpreting the data, validating the data, and then discovering possible outcomes of the study
(Creswell, 2014). This study also utilized a qualitative design because this design allows for an emergence of ideas and themes (Gray, 2009). A phenomenological research method also guided this study. Phenomenology was founded by Husserl and “offers a descriptive, reflective, interpretive, and engaging mode of inquiry from which the essence of an experience may be elicited” (Richards & Morse, 2013, p. 67).
Using the life course method also gave the advantage of exploring the numerous stages of a person’s life and discovering important life experiences from a woman’s childhood,
57 adolescence, early adulthood, and also allowed a woman to discuss current and future goals and aspirations (Giele, 2008). Richards and Morse (2013) explain the following:
People are considered to be tied to their worlds – embodied – and are understandable only in their contexts. Existence in this sense is meaningful and the focus is on the lived experience. Human behavior occurs in the context of relationships to things, people, events, and situations. (p. 68)
The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of female adjunct instructors via narratives and to discover the challenges they encounter as well as the coping strategies they employ in order to maintain a work-life balance while working at a community college. See
Figure 2.
Life story
Coping Strategies
Work-Life Balance
Figure 2. Connecting the life story method to female adjunct faculty members and how they balance work and life.
The methodology section of this paper includes a restatement of the research questions as well as a description of the research process. The reader will be given information about the process for how the human subjects were protected for this study through the Institutional
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Review Board (IRB) as well as information about the instrument that will be used to collect the data, the reliability and validity of the instrument, and the techniques that were used for gathering and analyzing the data.
Restatement of Research Questions
There are three research questions that guide this study. The first explores the life experiences of the subjects within the areas of identity, structure, relationship style, drive, motivation and adaptation by using Giele’s (2008) framework. The second research question asked the subjects to reveal the strategies used for work-life balance (Weber, 2011). The third research question utilized demographic factors to identify the subjects.
1. How do tenure-seeking female adjunct instructors at Southern California community
colleges describe their life course as being influenced by identity structure, relationship
style, drive, motivation and adaptive style.
2. What coping strategies are female adjuncts in community colleges using in able to
maintain a work-life balance?
3. What demographic factors (age, ethnicity, socioeconomics, first generation) of female
adjunct instructors are associated with the life story elements (identity, adaptations,
motivation, and relationships) that impact the work-life balance of female part-time
instructors.
Research Methodology
This study utilizes a qualitative, phenomenological approach. By utilizing a phenomenological approach, the researcher identifies a culture-sharing group and tries to ascertain the meaning of a phenomenon from the experiences of its contributors (Creswell,
2014). This approach strives to “understand the world from the participant’s point of view”
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(Gray, 2009, p. 171). The participants are purposefully selected (Creswell, 2014) and this study used the life course method by utilizing a series of questions designed for the Digital Women’s
Project (Weber, 2011).
Subjects were recruited through acquaintances teaching in community colleges and through social media. Participants were also asked to recommend other participants, which created a snowballing effect and allowed for a stronger representation of varied experiences due to the population being contacted through co-workers and acquaintances who typically work at different community colleges and have had different experiences.
The data sources include:
1. Via narratives, one semi-structured interview. Participants were asked a series of
questions that address different stages of life such as past, present, and future. These
interviews gave understanding of the life experiences and work-life balance that female
adjuncts in community colleges struggle with.
2. Socio-demographic data. Subjects were asked to fill out a form that included the
following information: mother’s maiden name, asked to give a pseudonym (for coding
purposes), birth date, place of birth, education level, occupation, employer, marital status,
date of marriage, spouses birth date, spouses education and occupation, children’s gender
and year of birth, mother’s education and occupation, father’s education and occupation,
siblings gender and year of birth, total household income, own earnings,
health/illness/accidents/disabilities, religion, languages, countries visited and lived.
3. Informed consent. This form provided the subjects with the information regarding the
study and also included the options for sharing information, confidentiality, and the
option to withdraw from the study and/or interview at any time.
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Setting
The setting for this study was community colleges in Southern California. This setting was chosen due to the researcher having a relationship with community colleges and the closeness of these schools to the researcher’s home and work. Their locations made it easier for the researcher to meet with the subjects face-to-face. However, when a subject had time constraints to meet, the researcher interviewed the participants over the phone.
Population, Sample, and Sampling Procedure
The population for the study consisted of female adjunct faculty members who have taught 3 or more years at the community college level in Southern California as an adjunct. The position as an adjunct is their primary employment. The sample for this study included 20 female adjunct instructors who were teaching as adjuncts in Southern California. Female adjunct members were contacted through acquaintances and through social media. A notification of the study was posted on Facebook and Linked In. Participants also identified others within their field who met the criteria of the study which is also known as a snowballing technique and allows for researchers to “interview someone who is a ‘knowledge source’, who then suggests other likely persons” (Gray, 2009, p. 153).
Participants were also asked to refer other individuals as a snowballing technique
(Richards & Morse, 2013) in order to gain more participants and an even broader array of experiences. Ideally, interviews would take place face-to-face and be recorded with participant permission; however, in cases where face-to-face meetings were not possible, interviews were conducted over the phone and recorded, also with participant permission. The participants were included on a first come, first serve basis until the minimum number of 20 participants was reached.
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Human Subjects Consideration
This study adhered to Pepperdine’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) which is required in order to make sure that all participants’ rights are protected and all participants are handled with ethical and professional standards (Pepperdine University, 2009). Each subject was given an informed consent form to fill out which gave a description of the study, included assurance of their safety and protection, confidentiality, and the recording of the interview. The participants also filled out a demographic form in which they gave information about their background such as education level, family background, household income, and any disabilities or illnesses. Site permission was not required for this study because the participants were recruited via colleagues, snowball sampling, and social media. Though the risks to the participants were minimal, some potential risks were breach of confidentiality, psychological due to the nature of the life course questions, and possible loss of employment. However, all participants were warned of the risks in advance and were continuously advised that participants may stop participating in the study at any time. The participants’ identity was not anonymous to the researcher because the interviews took place in person or over the phone, but the participants’ responses to the interview questions as well as their answers to the demographic information is included in the study under the participants’ chosen pseudonym so they can not be identified.
During the interview process, participants were given the interview questions to look at while the researcher read them out loud to the participant. The participant was always told when the interview was being recorded and if a participant needed to stop, take a break, or became uncomfortable, the interview was stopped and resumed if, and when, the participant was ready to continue. The research has had either no contact or very minimal contact with the participants since the interviews took place. Some of the participants work at the same community college as
62 the researcher, so they may have come in contact with one another in a professional setting.
Participants were also encouraged to contact the researcher if they would like to view a final copy of their transcripts.
Data Gathering Instruments
This study utilized one semi-structured interview that contained five major questions.
Giele (2008) created a study in which the four questions will be used. The fifth question was created by researchers at Pepperdine University to identify strategies for work-life balance
(Heath, 2012; Weber, 2011).
The participants were asked the following questions while being recorded with Rev software on either an iPhone (if the interview was done in person) or on Rev software on an iPad
(if the interview was taking place over the phone):
The first questions asked the participants to reflect on their early adulthood:
• What is the level of your education?
• Did it include college education or graduate education?
• What did you think you would like to become in terms of occupation and type of lifestyle
or family life?
• What were you thinking then and how did things actually turn out?
The second area of questions asked the participants to reflect on their childhood and early
adolescence:
• What was your family’s attitude toward women’s education
• What did they think about you going to college?
• What did they think about what you would become?
• What was the effect of your parents’ education on your attitudes?
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• What about brothers and sisters? Did they influence you?
• What about family finances?
• How about your or your family’s involvement in a faith community?
• What about your families’ expectations?
• How was your education different from or similar to that of your parents and brothers and
sisters?
The third area of questions asked the participants to discuss their current adulthood:
• Since college, what kinds of achievement and frustration have you experienced?
• What type of mentors have you had?
• What has happened that you didn’t expect-in employment?
• What about with family?
• What about with your faith?
• What about furthering your education?
• Has there been job discrimination?
• Have you had children?
• Has there been a change in marital status like separation or divorce?
• What about health problems of yourself or a family member?
• What about moves, how have these influence you?
• What about your membership in the community?
• How has your involvement or lack of involvement in faith community impacted your
life?
• What types of housing issues might you have encountered and how did they impact you?
• Have racial and gender integration or non-integration influenced you?
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• What about a job search or loss and its impact on your life?
• And feelings about yourself? Have there been good things such as particular rewards,
satisfaction, or recognition?
The fourth area of questions asked the participants to discuss their future adulthood:
• Looking back at your life from this vantage point, and ahead to the future, what are your
main concerns at the moment?
• Looking further out, what are your goals, hopes and dreams for the next few years?
• What problems do you hope to solve?
• Where do you hope to be a few years from now with respect to work or finishing
schooling?
• What are your hopes in regard to family?
• What are your expectations for your community or faith community?
• What are your concerns around mentors?
• What about health?
• What types of concerns do you have around finances?
This fifth section of questions asked participants to discuss coping strategies to maintain a
work-life balance:
• What coping strategies do you use to respond to concerns related to the plurality of roles?
• Have you ever felt pressured to choose between work and home? What made you think
that you could do both successfully?
• Do you feel that your family life or work life have suffered because of your involvement
in work or family?
• Have you felt any guilt related to either family or work?
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• Are there times that you felt particularly successful at juggling the demands of both work
and home? Why?
• Were you prepared for the demands of work and life balance? Why or why not?
• What strategies do you implement in your own life in order to remain balanced?”
Validity and Reliability of Data Gathering Instruments
This researcher is interested in in the work-life balance of female adjunct instructors at a community college because the researcher is also one. The researcher is utilizing a phenomenological study in order to gain access to the participants’ thoughts and experiences in so she can make sense of and interpret the participants’ actions and feelings (Gray, 2009). This research design also requires a researcher to “understand the world from the participant’s point of view. This can only be achieved if the researcher ‘brackets out’ their own preconceptions”
(Gray, 2009, p. 171). The researcher may have seen or spoken to subjects within the confines of a work environment but has not had any participants that are actively involved in the researcher’s life. And while the researcher is a female part-time faculty member at various community colleges in Southern California, this researcher assumes each person’s story is different and has different historical and demographic reasons for pursuing teaching in higher education and for the utilization of coping strategies.
Qualitative research requires different approaches to establish validity than quantitative research. Creswell (2014) explains that validity can be established in quantitative research by uncovering meaningful and useful inferences from the participants’ answers and that there are typically three forms of validity such as content validity which is looking to see if the interviews are measuring the data they were projected to measure. The second way to establish validity within a study is to examine if the responses are forecasting measurements for the criteria of the
66 study and lastly, validity is established through construct validity which helps to determine if the study can measure the concepts being examined within the study (Creswell, 2014). Gray (2009) also explains that both internal and external validity is required for a qualitative study. It is recommended for researchers within this research design to be very self-reflective and be able to examine if their own beliefs and experiences can have any influence or affect on the research process (Gray, 2009). It is also important to establish external validity by being able to take the data and generally apply its conclusions to similar cases or groups (Gray, 2009).
Validity is required to guarantee the accuracy of the findings from the study whereas qualitative reliability establishes that the researcher’s methods and procedures are consistent ands stable among other researchers and projects (Creswell, 2014; Gray, 2009). There are many methods proposed to establish reliability within a study, but the most recommended are data triangulation and investigator triangulation (Creswell, 2014; Gray, 2009). Data triangulation occurs when a variety of data sources are examined and can be used to build a validation for themes because if multiple data sources can be examined and various themes agreed upon, this will add to the validity of a study (Creswell, 2014). Investigator triangulation also allows a qualitative study to verify for accuracy and validity by having more than one researcher examining the data and verifying the agreed upon results (Gray, 2009). Women from the Digital
Women’s Project at Pepperdine University have utilized Giele’s (2008) semi-structured interview questions and then added a question to the instrument in order to gain more understanding of the strategies women employ to maintain a work-life balance. This has been used for several studies.
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Each of the researchers participating in the Digital Women’s Project at Pepperdine
University have undergone training in order to establish content validity for the study. Training for this project included learning how to create a connection with the participants, clearly explaining the procedures and purpose of the study to the participants, and answering and questions that the participants may have had about the study. This researcher was also asked to take on the role of a participant prior to starting her own project in order to see what the subjects’ experiences would be like, to gain knowledge of the interview questions, and to be mindful of any biases.
The Digital Women's Project (Weber, 2011) has several students who have completed their dissertation research based on Giele (2008) and the array of topics show the range of qualitative methodology. Krymis (2011) examined the issues of balance among women of faith.
Barge (2011) studied the issues African American women deal with as their strive to achieve a work-life balance, as well as their various competing priorities. Heath (2012) characterized the different strategies mothers utilize in order to achieve a work-life balance. Almestica (2012) studied women who were in mainly male dominated careers and the issues they dealt with to maintain a work-life balance. Jenson (2013) looked at how Native American women utilize the role of technology in order to better achieve a work-life balance. Toston (2014) examined the strategies of women within a particular Protestant church community. Capron (2014) investigated how mentoring plays a role in an organization’s retention. Campbell (2015) studied women with a theological association who were leaders. Rothberg (2014) examined how health issues, particularly cancer, has an impact on a person’s work and family. Studies are continuously developing as more researchers work on their dissertations
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Some other projects within the Digital Women’s Project have also used the life course method to study women who have gone through difficult hardships as children and the impact that this may have had on their lives. Neiworth (2015) examined women who, as children, had very traumatic experiences and the impact that this may have had on their style as a leader.
Shashinamen (2015) looked at the role culture and family play for women in India who work within the financial industry. Green (2015) studied women who work within the non-profit area of the economy and their leadership strategies.
Use of this methodology is extremely beneficial in “circumstances where relatively little is known about the phenomenon” (Gray, 2009, p. 166), such as discovering the lived experiences of female adjunct instructors at community colleges.
Data Gathering Procedures and Strategies
The dataset was collected from 20 female adjunct instructors at community colleges in
Southern California. The adjuncts were contacted through acquaintances and social media for participation in the study. Participants were also asked to refer other female adjunct instructors and this created a snowball effect where participants referred other participants. This researcher began conducting interviews after IRB approval starting in December 2015. The majority of interviews took place in January 2016 and allowed for contacting female adjuncts during the beginning of the Spring semester which seemed to increase participation and availability for the participants because the semester had just begun and the participants were not overly consumed with grading yet.
The following steps were used for data collection:
1. IRB process: Pepperdine University granted full IRB approval before the researcher
began recruiting participants or conducting any interviews. The participants were also
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told of their right to stop participating at any time, ensured the safety of the participants,
and showed that ethical considerations have been undertaken.
2. Participant recruitment: Those who were willing to participate had to meet the conditions
of being a female adjunct employee at a community college. They also had been
teaching for a minimum of 3 years and their employment as an adjunct is their main
source of income. The participants were taken on a first come, first serve basis until the
minimum 20 participants were reached. However, there was not a requirement for a
participant to be married, a mother, or to be a certain age.
3. Subjects were given human subject approval paperwork as well as a summary of the
dissertation proposal and interview protocol either in person or via e-mail prior to
interviews.
4. In-person interviews were scheduled for approximately a one hour timeframe. They took
place at a location of comfort to the participant. Some interviews took place at a
Starbucks near the participant’s home or campus while other face-to-face interviews took
place in a quiet, private room on the participant’s campus. When a face-to-face interview
was not possible, the interview was conducted over the phone at a time of convenience to
the participant. Informed consent and socio-demographic forms were also presented to
each participant before the interview either in person or through e-mail. The forms were
signed and given back to the researcher either in person or electronically. The interviews
were recorded electronically through an electronic recording device on the researcher’s
phone upon the participants’ consent. These interviews were then later transcribed into a
written format in a Microsoft Word document. Participants may request to view the
finished transcripts for validity at any time and findings were made available to the
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participants by notifying the participants that the study has been completed, and if they
expressed an interest to view the final report, the researcher sent it to them via e-mail.
Data Management
The socio-demographic and informed consent forms have been placed in a locked filed cabinet at the researcher’s home. Forms that were e-mailed to the researcher as well as transcripts of the interviews are kept on the researcher’s computer in a password-protected file.
All electronic recordings are kept on the researcher’s password-protected iPhone and iPad. The forms used for data gathering are included in the appendixes: interview questions in Appendix A, the demographic questionnaire form in Appendix B, the informed consent letter in Appendix C, the interview protocol in Appendix D, and the invitation to participate in Appendix E.
Proposed Data Analysis Process
This phenomenological study explored how a female adjunct’s life course was influenced by Giele’s (2008) study on identity, relational style, drive and motivation, and adaptive style.
This study also examined the coping strategies female adjuncts use for work-life balance as well as what demographic facts have affected their life course.
The researcher conducted the interviews but then transcribed the recorded interviews at a later date. The transcripts were then coded for key words, topics, and themes based on the research questions as well as shared issues and themes that arose from the participants’ responses. Giele’s (2008) framework guided the codes:
Identity: How does R see herself? Who does she identify with as being like herself? Does she mention her race, ethnicity, social class, [religion], or how she is different or similar to her family? What qualities does she mention that distinguish her—intelligence, being quiet, likeable, innovative, outstanding, a good mother, lawyer, wife, etc.?
Relational style: What is R’s typical way of relating to others? As a leader, follower, negotiator, equal colleague? Taking charge? Is she independent, very reliant on others
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for company and support, has a lot of friends, is lonely? Nature of the relationship with her husband?
Drive and motivation: Need for achievement, affiliation, power. Is R ambitious and driven or relaxed and easy going? Is she concerned to make a name for herself? Focused more on helping her husband and children than on her own needs (nurturance vs. personal achievement)? Mentions enjoying life and wanting to have time for other things besides work. Enjoys being with children, doing volunteer work, seeing friends. A desire to be in control of her own schedule, to be in charge rather than to take orders.
Adaptive style: What is her energy level? Is R an innovator and a risk taker or conventional and uncomfortable with change and new experience? Does R like to manage change, think of new ways of doing things? Is she self-confident or cautious? Used to a slow or fast pace, to routine and having plenty of time, or to doing several things at once. (pp. 401-402)
Further analysis of the data followed after the initial topic coding. Creswell (2014) explains that “coding is the process of organizing the data by bracketing chunks” (p. 197) and codes are typically terms used to categorize different themes found in the words, sentences or paragraphs of the transcripts. This is necessary to discover developing concepts, new themes, or comparisons (Richards & Morse, 2013). Using NVivo, codes were assigned to terms such as identity, relational style, drive and motivation, and adaptive. An emerging tree structure grew out of the numerous codes that were used for each interview such as coping strategies, work-life balance, and guilt. When quotes taken from the interviews were relevant in multiple codes, they were assigned to all relevant categories.
Another step of the coding process involved meeting with two other dissertation students who are using the same theoretical framework and interview questions for their study. Together, the group agreed upon codes that would be used in the final analysis process and the group reviewed multiple interviews and coded them with the agreed upon codes. The group then compared the codes chosen for each interview and discussed similarities as well as any discrepancies in coding. This aided with internal consistency and reliability of the study.
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For this study, the interviews were coded to identify passages that related to coping strategies for work-life balance, demographic factors that influence a woman’s life course, as well as how a woman’s life course is influenced by identity, relationship style, drive and motivation, and adaption. The findings also examined differences and similarities in age, ethnicity, socioeconomics and generations. NVivo software was used in the analysis of each interview. Participants were welcome to review the final transcripts of their interview at any time to check for accuracy and all of the women were protected by the anonymity and recording system which recorded each woman by the pseudonym of their choice. The investigator acted as an objective commentator and presents these found among the information being explored.
Summary
This study examined the stories of female adjunct instructors at a community college and gave insight into the work-life balance that so many of them strive to obtain. The women studied were of different ages, ethnicities, have different career pathways and have different reasons for becoming and remaining an educator. This study also gave insight into coping strategies women use to effectively balance their work and family life.
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Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Findings
The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore the life course of female adjunct instructors and how they were influenced by identity structure, relationship style, drive and motivation, and adaptive style. A second purpose for this study was to discover what coping strategies female adjuncts use to maintain a work-life balance and what demographic factors impact their work-life balance. Given that over half of all adjuncts within community colleges are women (Leslie & Gappa, 2002), this research is significant to illustrate the strategies female adjuncts implement as well as the struggles they face to balance the many roles they hold.
This research also contributes to the paucity of research on female adjuncts within the community college and provides a greater understanding of what female adjuncts go through while working at community colleges and hopefully will lead to departmental changes. Creswell
(2009) also explains that using a phenomenological research method is useful in occasions where there is little known or there is no pre-existing research.
The research questions used to guide this study were:
1. How do female adjunct instructors at Southern California community colleges describe
their life course as being influenced by identity structure, relationship style, drive,
motivation and adaptive style.
2. What coping strategies are female adjuncts in community colleges using in able to
maintain a work-life balance?
3. What demographic factors (age, ethnicity, socioeconomics, first generation) of female
adjunct instructors are associated with the life story elements (identity, adaptations,
motivation, and relationships) that impact the work-life balance of female part-time
instructors.
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The data analyzed came from 20 participants who are female adjunct faculty that work at the community college level. This study used the life story framework and four semi-structured interview questions from Giele (2008) to explore how the elements of identity, motivation, adaptation, and relationships impact female adjunct instructors working at the community college level as well as a fifth question that was created by the Digital Women’s Project at
Pepperdine University (Weber, 2011) to discover what coping strategies they utilize to maintain a work-life balance.
Chapter 4 describes the findings from these interviews by identifying the themes of a female adjunct’s life course. Additional analysis explored the work-life balance of female adjunct faculty members and the coping strategies they implement.
Data Collection Procedures
The study required participation from female adjuncts that work at community colleges within Southern California. The individuals who volunteered for this study were initially referred by colleagues and then were asked to refer their colleagues or friends who would meet the criteria for the study. The 20 women who participated in the study did so because they had been referred by other individuals to participate which resulted in a snowballing effect (Richards
& Morse, 2013). By utilizing a snowballing effect, the participants were able to share a great assortment of experiences as well as a representation of varied ethnicities, ages, marital status, children, generations, and career goals.
This study utilizes the phenomenology methodology because it “becomes an exploration, via personal experience, of prevailing cultural understanding. Value is ascribed not only to the interpretations of researchers, but also to the subjects of the research themselves . . . [and] this inductive approach seeks to find the internal logic of the subject” (Gray, 2009, pp. 22-23).
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This study also employed Giele’s (2008) life course method to better understand each participant’s experiences and how events in their lives helped shape their life path.
Selection Criteria
The sample for this study was “purposefully selected [and also included] snowball sampling (seeking further participants by using the recommendations of those participants already in the study)” (Richards & Morse, 2013, p. 89). Through snowball sampling, there was a greater variety of participants with varied backgrounds and experiences. The participants needed to meet three criteria: (a) female, (b) adjunct faculty member, and (c) employed at a community college for at least 3 years.
Participants were recruited by the researcher asking co-workers or friends to recommend possible participants who met the criteria. Those who took part in the study were also asked to recommend other female adjuncts to participate in the study. This created a snowball effect as well as the participation of the interviewees by their own references of colleagues and other female adjunct faculty members. This led to a total of 20 participants who volunteered to participate in this study. The 20 interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded, and analyzed, and represent the findings explained in this chapter.
Interviews
The participants were asked 4 questions which focused on a range of stages in a person’s life such as past (early childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood), present adulthood, and future adulthood in order to gain information and understanding about the life experiences of the female adjunct faculty members (Giele, 2008). Participants were also asked a fifth question about the strategies they implement to maintain a work-life balance (Weber, 2011).
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Each participant was given the same set of interview questions and was allowed as much time as needed to answer the questions. If a participant did not feel like expanding on a question, there was never any pressure put on them to expand their answers or give more details.
Participants were only asked to discuss the experiences and details they felt comfortable sharing.
The interviews for this study were conducted either in person or on the phone, depending on scheduling conflicts and closeness of the participant to the researcher. The interviews always began with a description of the study, an explanation of the purpose of the study, and were asked about any questions the participants may have about the purpose and procedure of the study.
Once participants felt comfortable to begin the process, they were asked to read the informed consent form and sign it once they were ready. By signing the form, the participants showed that they had been informed of their rights as a participant and that they could cancel participation at any time. Once signed, participants then filled out the demographic form which gave background information on varied areas such as their martial status, number of children, household income, family background, etc. Once all forms had been signed and participants felt ready, the researcher would activate the Rev recording software on the researcher’s iPhone (if interview was done in person) or the Rev recording app on the researcher’s iPad mobile device
(if interview was done over the phone). The researcher asked the participant for a pseudonym in order to protect the identity of the participant and to be used for quotes (Crewsell, 2009). Each interview was conducted with the same set of open-ended questions that allowed for consistency among the participants. The researcher may ask for clarification on an answer if the initial answer did not appear clear or was difficult to understand. Each interview lasted on average 45 minutes with times ranging from 32 minutes to 85 minutes and were later transcribed into written
Microsoft Word documents.
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Population Descriptions
The demographic data was calculated with the report presented in Table 1. A total of 20 female adjunct faculty members participated in the study and each of the participants in the study were working at a community college. Due to the snowballing effect, the participants varied in martial status and number of children they are raising. Ten of the participants are married, eight are single and four of the single women had been divorced. Three women have live-in partners, including one woman who had previously been divorced. Ten of the participants have children: three have one child, five have two children, two have three children and two of the participants are currently pregnant.
Various ethnicities, ages, amount of hours worked per week and number of schools they are employed at are also represented. Twelve of the participants are Caucasian, three are
Hispanic, one is African American, one is Filipino, one is Korean, one is South Asian and one is
Asian Indian.
The women in this study also represented four decades. Four women were born in the
1950s, three in the 1960s, six in the 1970s, and seven in the 1980s. Three reported working less than 10 hours per week, three work between 10 and 15 hours per week, seven work between 16 and 20 hours per week, five work between 24 and 30 hours per week and two work more than 30 hours per week. Also, eight participants only work at one community college, seven work at two community colleges, three work at three community colleges, one works at four community colleges and one works at five community colleges. Nine women make up 100% of their household income, six make up between 40 to 60% of their household income and five make up less than 35% of their household income.
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Table 1
Population Demographics
Name Age Relationship status Ethnicity Percentage Hours Number Number earned of worked of of schools household per children employed income week 1. Alice 28 Live-in boyfriend Caucasian 60% 16 0 2 2. Bev 33 Single Caucasian 100% 30 0 1 3. Billie 65 Divorced Caucasian 100% 30 3 2 4. Claire 51 Divorced Filipino 100% 16 2 1 5. Cleindori 38 Married/ Caucasian 100% 25 0 5 polyamorous 6. Faith 38 Divorced/live-in Hispanic 100% 20 2 1 boyfriend 7. Fiona 31 Married Caucasian 20% 30 3 4 8. 36 Married Caucasian 30% 18 2 2 Francesca 9. Jackie 59 Married Caucasian 50% 15 1 1 10. Jean 62 Single Caucasian 100% 20 0 1 11. Jessica 37 Single Korean 100% 10 0 2 12. Jill 44 Single African 100% 24 0 3 American 13. Knessa 53 Married Asian 20% 4 2 1 Indian 14. Lilly 33 Married Caucasian 25% 16 pregnant 3 15. Luna 38 Married Hispanic 35% 16 1 and 2 pregnant 16. Marie 56 Married Caucasian 50% 5 1 1 17. Megan 34 Married Hispanic 40% 34 2 2 18. Mollie 31 Married Caucasian 50% 32 0 3 19. Sara 38 Divorced South 100% 15 0 2 Asian 20. Sheila 52 Live-in partner Caucasian 55% 8 0 1
Data Analysis
The researcher reviewed each participant’s transcript to discover similarities as well as differences between the participants. The research was present and initially listened to the interview, but then later went back and reviewed each transcript for themes and key words that were related to the research questions and the literature. The researcher specifically looked for
79 themes in the transcripts that related to identity, relational style, drive and motivation, and adaptive style. Eight additional categories for work-life balance were coping strategies, age, ethnicity, socioeconomics, identity, adaptation, motivation, and relationships and the codes were applied. “Qualitative coding . . . aims to retain the detail of the data so it can be explored and rethought” (Richards & Morse, 2013, p. 46).
The transcripts were imported into NVivo software for analysis. Each of the themes from the transcripts were used to create nodes within the software. Once the initial analysis was done, the research utilized further extensive coding by having two other researchers within the
Digital Women’s Group analyze and compare coding of the nodes in order to establish inter-rater reliability.
Findings
This study utilized Giele’s (2008) theoretical framework and questions from the four life story elements: identity, relational style, drive and motivation, and adaptive style. The analysis also looked at coping strategies female adjuncts employ in order to maintain a work-life balance
(Weber, 2011).
Research Question 1
The first research question was: How do female adjunct instructors at Southern
California community colleges describe their life course as being influenced by identity structure, relationship style, drive, motivation and adaptative style?
Identity. Giele’s (2002) definition of identity discusses how a person is being different versus conventional and is also associated with a person’s location in time, space, and culture.
Giele (2008) establishes this definition by asking, “does she mention her race, ethnicity, social class, religion, or how she is different or similar to her family, or what qualities does she mention
80 that distinguish her – intelligence, being quiet, likeable, innovative, outstanding, a good mother, lawyer, wife, etc.” (pp. 401-402).
The most prominent finding from this sample regarding identity included the importance of having an education, which influenced the participants’ career path. A requirement to be an adjunct faculty member at a community college is to have a Master of Arts graduate degree. All participants were influenced to some degree by their parents or family members to pursue education, regardless of their parents or family members’ educational level.
It was found that a majority (14/20) of the participants in the study were not only first generation female college graduates, but were also the first in their family to obtain a graduate degree. Fourteen of the participants’ parents did not have a college degree and two of the participants had one parent that obtained a college degree. Four of the participants had both parents obtain college degrees and out of those four, two participants’ parents had both obtained a master’s degree and another participant had one parent with a master’s degree.
Many participants in the study expressed that their mothers had not obtained a college degree and often felt stuck in a marriage or unprepared to financially take care of herself. Others saw that by both parents not having an education, they ended up working in jobs that they were not happy with. Growing up within this family structure, many participants seemed to realize that an education was very important for them and they did not want to emulate their parents’ educational paths.
The following participants expressed these sentiments:
Cleindori: My mother did not finish college, I think she maybe did a semester or two and then she got married in the 60s, worked for a little while, had children and was a homemaker and has been for her entire life. She got divorced 20 years into her first marriage and had no skills or ability to support herself so that was a major factor for me in terms of, I’m getting an education because I saw that as the only way.
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Francesca: I think the biggest effect for me was the fact that none of them went to school and so that was sort of a motivation for me, looking at them, no one ever finished. They don’t seem very happy, well, my mom kind of finished school, she went to cosmetology school, so she finished that, but I wanted to be the first one to go and complete it and finish it.
Lilly: My mother particularly, she had me when she was very young and did not get to finish college and always expressed regret over that and was a homemaker, but she also worked part-time for my dad, and she always had felt trapped, so she reinforced in me the idea that it was important that we find a way to take care of ourselves so we did not feel trapped and I think that had a major impact on me choosing to finish college.
While most participants had very supportive family members, two participants expressed that their families were not supportive of their decision to obtain a college education:
Sheila: Well, I came from a very 1950s style, nuclear family-thinking type of parents. My father thought that, my father was very sexist. He thought that the only role for a woman was to get married and stay at home and be a housewife and have children. So there never was any encouragement for us to seek higher education beyond high school . . . When I went to law school they actually laughed at me and told me I was being ridiculous at my age . . . So I had no support from my family whatsoever.
Luna: I guess maybe being the first, because I’m actually the first in the family to go to college, first female. I never had any support from my mom. When I would get an A on a paper and I would show it to her, she would just brush it off and just say, “What do you want me to do?”
Other participants expressed that they came from immigrant families and there were high expectations and pressure to obtain a college degree:
Alice: My dad, he was really passionate about it too. He was an immigrant from Greece, actually. My parents met in college because my dad was born and raised in Greece, immigrated to the U. S. at 18 to go to Purdue University to study Engineering. His family really wanted the men and women to go to college in America. It was a really important thing his family had been pushing.
Claire: We are from the Philippines, so they just had high school educations and I think they just knew, okay, you just have to get an education, that's it. I don't think they really understood what it involved, what it meant, and I don't think it was women's education, necessarily, it was, okay that is an American thing to do. If you want to be successful in America this is what you have to do.
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Jessica: My family has always, always, always looked at education as our first goal. Probably because they didn’t go to college, they graduated with a high school education, and they are the typical immigrants who aspire for more for their children.
Another area where many women expressed a connection to identity was with their faith.
Many women spoke of their faith as being one of the most important areas in their lives and also as something that gives them strength and support:
Knessa: My faith is, it has been extremely important and I definitely feel my identity is linked to that. Because I’ve traveled so much, I went to Hong Kong, I went to India, the U.S., if somebody asks me where I’m from, I don’t have a good answer, but I have a strong answer of my faith, because that’s stable wherever I am. My identity really is first my faith and then the country as well.
Megan: My involvement in a faith community, like religious background, I think that if it wasn’t for God, I don’t know where I’d be . . . I think because of my faith and because of my religious background and my upbringing, it’s why I’m sitting here, honestly.
Fiona: Involvement in a faith community, as a Christian my faith is very important to me and so when I was in college at UC Irvine, I think if I hadn't had a bible study and I hadn't had people who were constantly praying for my success and encouraging me, I think it would be much more difficult especially balancing 18 units and 65 hours of work. It was daunting so I think it was a large factor in me completing my education.
The participants in the study expressed how important it was for them to have a college education. Most contributed their success in obtaining higher education to their parents or family members really supporting and encouraging them to have more options and choices as an educated person in the workforce. A few participants were from migrant families and having a college degree was very important to their culture. Two participants spoke of succeeding in education despite having very little support at home to obtain a college degree but their family members finally said how proud they were of their child who had obtained a Master of Arts degree. Lastly, many women spoke of how important their faith was to them. It was a major part of their identity and they spoke of how important religion and prayer was for their success in both education and in their current position.
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Relationship style. Giele (2008) explains the relationship theme as how one connects to others and asks if she is “a leader, follower, negotiator, equal colleague? Taking charge? Is she independent, very reliant on others for company and support, has a lot of friends, is lonely?
Nature of the relationship with her husband?” (p. 402). Ten of the women who participated in this study have children and most of them attributed their ability to be an adjunct faculty member to their partners and/or parents’ support and contributions.
Participants gave these statements about their families and partners on how they have helped support them:
Faith: My mom and dad who I moved close to to kind of get this life back on track, they’re huge, I don’t know if the right word is coping, but that’s one thing, they’re a source of support that I go to often when I feel like all the different demands of my life become too much.
Francesca: I think the biggest thing that helps us, my husband and I, is being able to depend on other people, so my mom has played a huge part in helping me balance work and my kids, so there’s times where my husband can’t be here, I always know that my mom’s going to be here and she’s going to like take care of everything, so I think we’ve been very lucky
Luna: Because I have my husband, that helps out a lot. I also have my mom. I have my aunt, they’re close by. I can get a lot of stuff done. If I have to go to a department meeting, my aunt’s home, “Yeah, I’m here. Drop him off.” If it weren’t for my mom and my aunt and my husband, I don't think I would be successful.
Some participants spoke of how their relationships with friends actually suffered and changed as they became more educated or busy with schooling and work:
Claire: My family has always been supportive, but I really thought all my friends would be supportive, but there were certain sections of them that were just not very supportive. They were like, "Oh. You are still in school." Kind of weird about it. Eventually they kind of faded away. Yeah. That was really the one thing that I did not expect.
Jean: I think my social let me, my friendship suffered. I lost touch with a lot of people during the time I was in school and during the time my family was undergoing all these changes, so yeah, I just yeah, I lost touch with a lot of people. You couldn’t do it all. And I had family and I had school and then I had work, so I was going to school part- time, working full-time and then taking care of all the issues.
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Many of the participants in the study spoke of how much their family members have helped them, especially those who have children. They relied heavily on their family members for help with childcare as well as emotional support. However, some women spoke of the strain work and school placed on their friendships and social life which resulted in losing touch with friends. A few participants who acquired a master’s degree later in life discovered that they grew apart from friends and co-workers who were not involved in the participants’ new life of education and teaching.
Drive and motivation. The third theme, drive and motivation, focuses on a woman’s need for achievement, affiliation, power. Giele (2008) asks if a woman is:
ambitious and driven or relaxed and easy going? Is she concerned to make a name for herself? Focused more on helping her husband and children than on her own needs (nurturance vs. personal achievement)? Mentions enjoying life and wanting to have time for other things besides work. Enjoys being with children, doing volunteer work, seeing friends. A desire to be in control of her own schedule, to be in charge rather than to take orders. (pp. 402)
Many of the participants in the study displayed a strong drive to become a full-time instructor, to possibly obtain more education, and also expressed an inherent intrinsic satisfaction for performing the job of an instructor and the personal satisfaction that went along with it.
Many of the participants spoke of their desire to be a full-time college instructor as a main concern of theirs:
Lilly: My main concerns are finding full-time employment after this baby’s born, I’m not going to worry about that before, I have enough to worry about right now.
Mollie: My main concern is finding a full-time job with health insurance. My husband is self-employed so he doesn’t get health insurance through his company either, so we both have to pay for health insurance out of pocket which is expensive and he’s self- employed, he does construction, so he can’t do his job forever because it’s physically demanding work, so eventually I’m going to be supporting us the way he’s supported me through all of my figuring stuff out and getting degrees and getting started, I’ll be supporting him when he’s too old to physically do what he does. So by the time that
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comes, I’d like to be fully established at a full-time position somewhere to relieve that worry, so, that’s the big one
Bev: I again would rather have a full-time job just to be a little more comfortable and benefits would be my main thing, but I don’t think I’m as concerned with it as some people who are like oh, you need to apply for all these jobs and I’m like I really like my job now.
Luna: Try to see if I can apply for full-time maybe in the next couple of years and eventually see if I can get full-time. I have heard about a lot of instructors it took them 10 years, that’s why I feel like I fall into that category. It’s probably going to take me longer now but I’m going to try though. Even if I’m not hired I feel like I need to have the experience of the interview process.
It is important to note that a majority of the participants repeatedly spoke of their goal of a full-time position and their desire for full-time work. They spoke of their desire for full-time work so many times that they apologized for “sounding like a broken record” (Mollie) but this repeated repetition makes it clear that this is a major area of concern for most female adjuncts within the study.
Many of the participants spoke not only of a need for a full-time position, but they also spoke of a drive to obtain additional schooling and/or a PhD:
Lilly: I would like to find full-time employment and my concern is that I would like to finish my education. I’m proud of how much I’ve accomplished already but I would like to complete what I set out to do and get my doctorate in literature.
Mollie: Well, I’d like a full-time job, I would like to have the house in our name, in a few years I would like to have started a family, and I want to go back for my PhD in literature, in English of some sort, so in order to do that, I have to become proficient in two foreign languages. So in the next couple years, I wanna get my foreign languages down so I can start the PhD process.
Fiona: My goal is to figure out what I'm going to do education wise, if I just go ahead and bite the bullet and start an Ed.D. program. There's one that I can have done in 2 years and I already have most of a dissertation actually written for it. Or do I hold out hope that I can find a Ph.D. in Literature that will fit me and my lifestyle? So that's a goal. I want to make a decision in the next year or so.
Knessa: I have a love for education. I took a second master’s in history because I enjoyed the subject and I’m doing another master’s in education because I should know what the current research is in education. I may not do a PhD just because of my age, but
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I’m always interested in further education. I think education is life-long, actually, you’re going to constantly find new things and become curious and that’s actually what happened to me.
Others spoke of the worry they have that they might be forced to get a doctorate degree in order to stay competitive in the field:
Luna: Sometimes what concerns me is I’m going to have to go back and get a PhD. Honestly I don't have the money for it. Because when they say, now a bachelor’s is not that important now you get a master’s. When is it going to come to a point I worry about that, that a master’s is not going to be enough, that you’re going to need a PhD. Maybe the community college system is going to change and they’re going to want all these instructors to now have a PhD. That’s one of my concerns.
Megan: PhD’s seem to be the thing everywhere now. How long until my master’s isn’t enough and when am I going to decide to make that move. Am I willing to make that move? And is it something that I’m capable of doing as a mom? My master’s was tough, but it wasn’t impossible, obviously. I think if I have to get my PhD which is becoming the norm in kinesiology, am I going to have to do that? Will I be able to do that? Will my kids resent me eventually?
Other spoke of seeing out additional schooling in the sense of it being purely for enjoyment:
Jackie: I could take class. In fact, there's a lot of classes that I look and I go, "Maybe I'll just audit it and go sit in." I don't want to do any more homework but I still like learning . . . If I took schooling, it would just be probably something that's fun and interesting a few years from now.
Jean: No additional schooling except for fun stuff.
Lastly, many adjunct instructors spoke of the satisfaction they received from their students and by teaching which keeps them motivated:
Cleindori: I have a habit of when students, sometimes at the end of the semester they give you a card or they write you a note, I keep all of those things and those times when I’m like, well, I guess I didn’t get that second interview, I look at those things and say, you know, even if I didn’t get the full-time position, then I’ve got these other things and there’s this person out there who thinks they’ve benefitted from being in my class in some way.
Sara: I’m not here for rewards or even a pat on the back, I don’t really need that recognition. What I do want is my students to learn. I want them to get something out of
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my classes. I want them to take something away from the classes and use it and apply it in their own lives. That gives me great satisfaction and that’s my greatest reward.
Jackie: I have my kudos folder. I have my kudos folder so when a student gives me a card or writes me an email that says "you changed my life because of this because of that, whatever." I have students that I had 8 years ago and now they're my friend on Facebook. So yeah, I have my kudos folder and I should probably go read it. Because every time I get to that feeling like, "aargh", I pull out my kudos folder and I start reading the changes I've made in people's lives and then I go, "Okay. I can keep doing this. It's all right."
Fiona: I never thought I would like teaching online but its been really satisfying. I been really rewarding to know that I can help students who otherwise may not be able to get out of their house to the classroom. I end up with a lot of students who are disabled or who have no other means to get to school or who are doing what I did, who are working full-time and couldn't otherwise fit classes in except at 4 in the morning.
Many participants spoke of their desire and drive for a full-time position as a professor. These women also spoke of a desire to pursue a doctoral degree but often worried if they would realistically be able to achieve this with the demands it would place both on their time and finances. However, others worried that they would be forced to obtain a doctoral degree in order to remain current and competitive in their field. The participants who were nearing retirement were interested in seeking out more education purely from a vantage point of wanting to learn more about things that interested them and not because they wanted to obtain more degrees or certificates.
Most participants did not experience typical recognition from their campus, department, or peers, but felt that the recognition and thanks from students was what made their job fulfilling and worthwhile. Most women spoke of saving e-mails and notes from students that thanked the women for their helpfulness and ability as a teacher. These were notes that the women would repeatedly refer back to when going through a difficult time and it would remind them of the reasons they became an instructor in the first place.
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Adaptative style. Giele (2008) defines adaptive style by examining “what is her energy level? Is R an innovator and a risk taker or conventional and uncomfortable with change and new experience? Does R like to manage change, think of new ways of doing things? Is she self- confident or cautious? Used to a slow or past pace, to routine and having plenty of time, or to doing several things at once” (p. 402). All of the women who participated in the study had been teaching for at least 3 years and though they were never directly asked how long they had been teaching, one mentioned that she had been teaching for over 11 years. Because the job of an adjunct varies semester-to-semester, the job does require a lot of adaptation and ability to adjust.
Most participants spoke of the different ways they have had to adjust and adapt to different situations.
Some women expressed that they did not expect to get divorced but then they adapted and persevered:
Faith: Well I ended up getting a divorce when my children were three and that I did not ever expect. So that was probably the biggest one of all and also I ended up giving birth to my twin daughters really, really early and had a difficult pregnancy . . . I ended up quitting teaching when I had my children and was out of a job for 4 years because of their early birth and ended up going back to work part-time when I separated from my husband and the girls were four and that’s when I started work and that’s when I also moved and moving to a different home closer to my parents for support.
Billie: I didn't expect to be divorced. I never would've dreamed that I would've gone out to Columbia University to get my master's degree. That was totally cool. Life unfolds. I didn't know I was going to go into adult education. Things happens and then you just, whatever happens, take that and you go with it where you can. I would say my life has not been planned out. I feel fortunate in a lot of ways that I have had the experiences that I have had.
Some women also spoke about becoming an adjunct later in life and the difficulties associated with that:
Knessa: I think that I went in very late, into the field, so one of the frustrations I had, I think, is that I was much older and I didn’t have the foundation, and I was changing fields as well, so I worked much harder, I felt, anyway, which may not be true, but that I worked harder than other people and had to try and catch up
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Jill: I didn't know it was going to be this hard. I don't know. I didn't have an awareness that it was going to be hard, but I didn't feel surprised that it was going to be hard. It just is what it is or was what it was. I've had to be pretty self-reliant my whole life. My mother was single and putting herself through school and working to support me, so I've always had to be really self-reliant.
One participant spoke about how she adapted to continue working while having a child during the beginning of a semester:
Fiona: I've been an adjunct during the time when I had all 3 of my kids so I had both of my boys over summer break. I had my daughter the second week of spring semester and I had her on a Tuesday and was teaching Tuesday, Thursday classes and I was back to work the following Tuesday. So there was that and exclusively breast-feeding was a challenge because not having an office. I pumped in my car in between classes, which is always special.
Some of the women spoke about the ways they had to adapt to unforeseen situations in their lives such as getting divorced or becoming an educator later in life. They spoke of the unexpected turns their lives have taken such as getting a master’s degree or doctoral degree and how happy they were from the unexpectedness of their lives. Other women spoke of the difficulties of breaking into education later in life and how tiring and wearisome it can be and how they did not expect it to be quite as difficult as it has been. Lastly, one woman spoke of having all three of her children while being an adjunct and returning to work only a week after having her daughter and how she had to adapt to her teaching schedule as well as being a new mom and having to breastfeed in her car.
Research Question 2
Research question 2 asked: What coping strategies are female adjuncts in community colleges using in able to maintain a work-life balance?
Finding ways to cope with the stress of a job is important in any field, but particularly in a career where adjuncts are expected to do a majority of their work outside of classroom
90 instruction. The participants were asked to think about what coping strategies they have used in regards to any concerns about plural roles in the home. This section of questioning also has the interviewee discussing whether she has felt pressured to choose between work and home as well as whether either work or home life has suffered due to this balance. This section of the interview also asked women to think about their work-life balance and if there were specific techniques that they used in order to help with this balance.
Coping strategies. Participants in this study depicted similar coping mechanisms to maintain a better work-life balance including time management, organization, and family support; however, many of the participants also spoke of the difficulties they faced in trying to maintain a work-life balance such as guilt, instability of class assignments and trying to allocate enough time for their social life.
Many participants reported similar coping strategies such as being organized and making lists:
Fiona: I think my first coping strategy is always to be hyper-organized so I'm a list maker, I'm someone who takes great pleasure in crossing things off of lists which is tough in a way because I'm also a master procrastinator. I've just had to become hyper- organized in making sure that my schedules line up with childcare, that I know what day the sales start at the supermarket so that I can go do my shopping early and be back home to have nap time and grade.
Alice: I make a lot of to-do lists, like a lot of lists because I'm scatterbrained enough and I need to kind of log things. It also kind of makes me feel like I'm achieving things that I can cross them out.
Many participants spoke of other activities for self-care including reading, exercise, making time for socializing, listening to music, or setting aside time for themselves:
Claire: Strategy. I don't know if it's a strategy in particular, but there was a moment, this is a year into my PhD program. I think I was working, one of my sons was still living at home, and I taking three grad classes, and I was going bananas, and I had to just stop, everything, well, I went to work. I had to just stop and do something else, and I did. I got reacquainted with music that I liked, just did something completely different from my
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course work, or writing, or anything like that. I still do that . . . Just learning to incorporate more social time.
Faith: My coping strategy as far as coping with the stress, is I exercise, I run and I have really strong, a very strong group of friends, like about four friends that are kind of the ones that I mentioned before who are my mentors, a strong group of women who I feel supported by and I’d say that’s probably my biggest coping, thing that helped me cope the most with stress.
Jessica: I do have a couple of coping strategies. One, I think it’s really important to talk to someone, whether it be a friend or family member. In my case, I take advantage of both my friends and my family members, but in addition, I definitely make it a point to talk to a therapist.
However, some women spoke of the struggle to maintain a balance and the guilt that is associated with it, especially if the participant was a mother:
Francesca: Yes. I think when I take a class because I feel like I have to and it’s not the ideal time, I definitely feel guilty because I know my husband’s going to have to do a little bit more and he’s going to have to adjust his schedule with his work to accommodate mine so I feel a little bit guilty that he has to do that and I feel guilty because I have to do that and I have to interrupt a balanced system, sometimes it makes me sad but at the end of the day, he knows that I have to work too. We survive.
Faith: Yes, definitely. I think every time I go to work, in a sense, I feel pressured not to, in a way. And I think that might be the nature of having young children who never ever want me to go to work. Who want me to be the one, to always be the one who takes them to school and picks them up and I only work part-time, mind you. They want me to be the one who makes their lunches and volunteer in their classrooms, which I’m going to do when you and I are off the phone, and so I definitely feel the pressure of being wanted, to be home, in home life, a lot, I’d say, yes. It’s probably a huge source of guilt for me, too, just feeling like I don’t have enough time for them, whether it’s rational guilt or not because I’m with them a lot, I only work part-time, so I definitely feel that pressure to figure it all out.
Lilly: I’ve felt of course guilty when I was working so hard and unable to call my parents and my sister as much, see them as much, guilty that I couldn’t, that I wasn’t bringing in enough money, but yet I was working so hard, a tremendous guilt involved in that and let’s see, at work sometimes I feel guilty because I don’t have the capacity or the resources to be the kind of teacher that I want to be.
Many participants shared their coping strategies for a work-life balance such as being very organized and making lists. Other participants spoke of the importance for activities
92 outside of work or home to feel balanced such as making time for reading, exercising, socializing, or listening to music. However, not all women could think of successful strategies and instead explained that it is very difficult to balance home and work and the guilt that comes along with it. Many of the women discussed the struggle to figure out how to manage their ever- changing work schedules and the guilt of not always being available for family and friends. A few women were at a loss when asked about what coping strategies they utilize and instead just said they basically are just getting by every day by reacting to whatever is in front of them that needs to be done.
Work-life balance. Grzywacz and Calrson (2007) explain work-life balance as being able to share and accomplish role-related expectations among an individual and his or her partner. Participants spoke of how they maintain a balance in their life but also spoke of the struggles they feel in trying to maintain a balance.
A majority of the work an adjunct does actually occurs outside of the classroom.
Instructors are responsible for planning, prepping, and grading for classes and while full-time instructors have an office and are compensated for office hours and most of their time spent on campus, adjuncts are only paid for the actual time they are teaching a class. The rest of the work must be done outside of class and adjuncts are not compensated for this time. This can create a heavy burden on an adjunct’s personal time and is an issue on how to successfully balance life and work since adjuncts typically have to bring work home.
Some of the participants spoke on the ways they have learned to better balance their work in terms of grading and lessening the demands they often place on themselves:
Alice: Sometimes I've learned, if the weekend comes and I have plans on Saturday but I still have a stack of papers to grade, I can leave them. Learning to be okay with that to go out and do what I want to do or having to turn something down that sounds like something that I would be interested in because work is in the way. So making sacrifices
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along the way, but not compromising everything entirely. I'm finding that, I think, is something that I've kind of learned.
Jill: It's just allowing myself to leave things undone a little bit longer across the board. I didn't answer all the emails I wanted to answer today. I didn't get through my to-do list today, and that's just going to be okay. Just taking the pressure off, and saying, "No," setting limits.
Claire: In terms of what I started doing, and here's a stretch, in terms of grading, I finally figured it out, is that the day that they should turn things in should be days where they're taking a mid-term, or they're doing something in class, individually where they don't need me to lecture or guide them, and that is when I start my grading. While, they are doing whatever they are doing, I start to the grading, and it cuts down on having to grade outside of the classroom. I started doing that and it's really been helpful. It was just so much grading. I was like, oh. My God, I am spending way to much time on this stuff.
Faith: Well, when I’m at work, I work part-time, I kind of have a protective space for myself to do my work because it’s difficult to do my work at home and the nature of my job is that I have to do work at home because I’m an instructor so I learned that pretty quickly that I need to have a work space and not work at home.
Other participants spoke of the difficulties they face in maintaining a sense of balance and the effect this has not only on themselves, but also on loved ones:
Alice: There have been times and I talked to another- she's actually a full time professor, but she was adjunct up until last year, about bringing grading home and how she feels its unfair to who you live with and she's been married for a few years now and she said, "You know, I feel like it's unfair to the people you live with when you bring your grading home in the evenings." I can kind of sympathize with that because even though you have just extra work to bring home, you feel a little bit guilt. You feel a little bit like you're too busy for them or something. You know, you're boring. You're sitting there grading and you're bored and not really happy doing it. I definitely had that feeling before.
Francesca: There have been several times where I have to choose between going to my daughter’s softball game or cancelling a class, so sometimes I have to decide, there will be times when I have to cancel because I know how important this is to her, and there’s times where I’m like, look, I can’t, sorry, I’m missing this but I do have an obligation to 35 students right now, so there have been times where I’ve had to choose between being with my kids or being with my students.
Claire: Yeah. I think, while I knew it was going to be hard, I didn't take into account the emotion that would be involved and the difficulty in managing that, and frustration, adjusting to trying to do everything. For a while I was going to school, and working full- time and my kids. I almost went nuts.
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Faith: Well, right now I feel like what I don’t ever have enough of is time to focus on one thing. I feel like I’m always, I feel capable of even doing all the things that I just mentioned to you, but I just feel the juggle of it all, the daily grind of it all sometimes feels a little daunting, just the caretaking aspect and the maintaining a household and having personal time and rest, that feels a little bit challenging at times. Exhausting.
Some of the participants shared the different ways they have learned to feel successful in having a work-life balance. Most of them synthesized similar sentiments of being okay with leaving things undone and lessening the pressure they place on themselves. A few women spoke about how they learned that it was acceptable for them to make plans and enjoy themselves on the weekends even if all of their grading had not been completed. Another participants spoke of grading exams or midterms while her students were working on projects in class that did not require her to lecture or guide them.
However, some of the women acknowledged the amount of work that takes place at home or outside the classroom and how it can place a burden on time typically spent with loved ones. One participant spoke of having to choose between attending her daughter’s softball game or cancelling a class she was to teach. The struggle to maintain both a successful work and home life is something that these women are continuously facing.
Research Question 3
The third research question was: What demographic factors (age, ethnicity, socioeconomics, first generation) of female adjunct instructors are associated with the life story elements (identity, adaptations, motivation, and relationships) that impact the work-life balance of female part-time instructors?
A search was made to discover the most frequent words used among all the interviews, which produced a key word cloud (Figure 3). In a word cloud, the larger the size of the words in the word cloud, the more frequent the word was used in the interviews. The most used words
95 included time (1153), work (763), know (708), school (565), feel (547), life (479), now (471), family (462), college (435), job (398).
sure great come see working littleneedmom maybe teaching way sort well first felt kids back nowtry classes job part
work good actually bit thing high always college school
timefind
still family even
life take onetwo year feel went able home gotpeople full parents started years friends day know pretty
something wanted
make children class semester
Figure 3. NVivo word cloud.
Age as a component of identity. Age played a significant role in how female adjuncts identified themselves and maintained a work-life balance, represented in the word cloud as time and years (larger words represent the words used most often). Most of the participants who were born in the 1950s and near retirement age commented frequently on retirement being in their near future. They expressed a desire to maintain their work schedules but looked forward to retiring and being able to do activities they enjoyed. The participants who were younger than 45
96 often spoke of their desire for full-time work and the difficulties of balancing grading, unpredictable work schedules, and a home life.
Participants who were near retirement felt like they didn’t want to spend their time on activities or events they did not like and were more choosy about how to spend their time:
Billie: I don't have a lot of money . . . I did not want to work full-time, because I really had a very strong feeling that, in order for me to be happy, I need space and time. I do not like rushing from one thing to another, and I've been able to do that. I live in a beautiful neighborhood and all that, but I live in a very frugal way so I am able to do that. That's what I want to continue to do, really. I'm not looking for a full-time 8:00 to 5:00 job.
Jean: I hope to solve how to have a lot of fun and really how to do, how to have more opportunities now to actually um, build my own abilities. I didn’t have that. As a single person you’re really focused on work and how to make ends meet. Now is a really good time to pursue some things that I would really like to see in my life.
Knessa: It’s faith, and I think once you grow old, the ambition is less, so that drive is also less so I feel, okay, if I never get a full-time position, it’s okay, it isn’t something to get upset about because I can do other things and I think part of it is compromising on what you wanted to happen and I think that’s fine because work is very different, it’s just about you.
Some participants who had grown children that were out of the house or did not have children typically felt more confident and comfortable with their work-life balance due to the fact that they do work on a part-time basis:
Bev: Not really. I’m not married and I don’t have kids, so I don’t really have, my home life I can do whatever I want, so I don’t really feel that pressure.
Sara: I’ve been able to very easily schedule my classes so that I’m able to meet my personal commitments but I feel if you were talking to me and I was working on a full- time capacity, I’d probably have some different responses.
Claire: I think once I went back to school and then I was teaching, it was easy to juggle things because my schedule was more flexible. I didn't have to be out of the house at 7 in the morning, so I could be in an office by 8, be stuck there until 5, and then on the freeway until 6. Now, that there is more, after I quit working full-time I had more flexibility and then I felt more successful being able to balance everything out, and do the things I needed to do.
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Many participants who were nearing retirement spoke of their desire to enjoy their activities and do things they really want to do. Many spoke of a lessening in ambition and focusing more on building their own interests and hobbies. One participant clearly stated that she was not interested in working a full-time job from 8am-5pm because she enjoys her space and time. Other women who were single or had children out of the house identified that they felt confident with their work-life balance because they were only taking care of themselves and were working part-time which gave them more time for personal commitments.
Ethnicity as a component of identity. One participant who classified herself as
African-American on the demographic form feels that her race has helped her get a job within the community college:
Jill: As far as teaching, though, I feel like it's helped me. I feel like schools recognize that they need to have a diversity among their teachers, some more than others . . . I think people might be a little bit more eager to give me a chance because they want to diversify their faculty, which I think is a good thing, especially as I'm working at community colleges.
Another participant who classified herself Hispanic, spoke of the family pressure she faced to have children early in her life and to possibly become a stay-at-home mom due to her heritage and culture:
Luna: I was really considering dropping out of school and becoming a mom, a stay-at- home mom at my age. Especially in my culture, my grandma, “Hey, at 18 I already had 3. You’re 23 and you still haven’t.” It’s funny because even through my late 20’s, my grandmother, “When are you going to have a baby?” It’s just like, “Not right now.” It’s funny because I didn’t get pregnant with my son until I was 32.
Two participants who classified themselves as Muslim spoke deeply about their faith and how it makes them feel more balanced and able to handle the stress and issues that come with work:
Sara: I guess it kind of ties into what I was just talking about. The idea that I feel more grounded, I feel more balanced, more centered as a human being as I’m growing older
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and getting older every year I feel more comfortable in my skin and I feel like I have made the right decision in terms of my career choices, in terms of my academic choices, I have no regrets with that. I know that teaching is my calling and I will continue to teach in whatever capacity that God allows me to and I feel at peace.
Knessa: I have a lot of faith – I have a lot of, I rely a lot on my faith and I share a lot with my husband and he gives me good advice, I think, and I’ve learned with patience you can accomplish a lot.
A few of the participants spoke about their ethnicity and how their culture has shaped their lives. One participant, who is African-American, reported that community colleges seemed to give her a chance because they want more diversity in their teaching staff and this helps the students identify and connect with their professors because they look more like them. Another participant spoke of the pressure she felt being from a Hispanic culture where women have children very young and how her grandmother pressured her to have a child early in her twenties.
Two other women who identified themselves as being of the Muslim faith connected deeply with their religion and shared that their faith has helped keep them grounded and balanced.
Adaptations. Many of the women spoke of how they have responded to changes and transitions within their lives:
Knessa: When I came to the U.S. I was 10 years a housewife and an accounting degree that no one really cared about, neither did I, and I had a literature degree that was not recognized. So part of the environment was the U.S. and you saw extraordinary women and I think that played a role and I think when you see other women, you think they can do it and you see Martha Stewart or something, you think she can do it like that, then you feel that you can do it. I haven’t had that level of success but it’s always, there’s the people out there who are amazing and I think that I always get inspired by that.
Fiona: I will say that it has been a reward to being an adjunct just because having a family I've moved my schedule so I teach 8 am to 2 pm Tuesday, Thursday at one school. I teach online only at another school and I teach Tuesday, Thursday night classes at a third school. My husband's day off is Tuesday, my mother-in-law's day off is Thursday and so I've never had to have my kids with someone that wasn't family. So that was something just really unexpected and rewarding about being an adjunct. I don't have crazy departmental meetings, I'm not expected to be in my office a million hours a day because I don't have one right. It was not something that I ever foresaw but its ended up being really a blessing.
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Claire: I was kind of like, I don't know what I want to do, and I don't want to work, and I don't want to be in an office. I can't deal with it. I though well, I wasn't ready for a PhD program, at that point. I thought well maybe just try a masters and I think I could teach. I started in a credential program and I think I just thought well if I am going to do that while I am here. Let me just get a masters in English, and then I will make more money. Then I realized I didn't want to do high school, and then I thought, hey, I will go, I was ready then for a PhD program. That's when I went into the PhD program. Yeah. I started observing classrooms and environments and I was like, oh, I don't think I am going to be a good fit. Plus, I would have to be there at 7 o'clock every morning. Not for me.
Many of the women spoke of the various ways they have adapted to their settings and surroundings. One woman spoke of coming to this country and how her degrees from other countries did not transfer over. She had to take new classes and obtain new degrees, but she saw other women pursuing their education and being successful, so she felt by watching other women, she knew she could do it too. Other participants spoke of the benefits to being an adjunct such as having shorter work days and not having to attend department meetings.
Socioeconomics. Many participants expressed economic concerns with their current position as well as the different ways they try to figure out how to make enough money and also to open themselves up for possibilities of better employment:
Jill: I'm also exploring television writing, which obviously is just as secure a job future as writing fiction. Right now, I'm exploring the practical possibilities, like finding full- time teaching work and/or other work that I can do in education that have long-term benefits. Still exploring my goals as a fiction writer, and then looking for ways, the long shot of writing for television, which would be a combination of being creatively satisfied and making more money than the other two options. I'm still trying to figure things out, but the goals are to be on a path where my life is not as hard and there's a light at the end of the tunnel as far as things stabilizing and being financially stable . . . Right now, I'm teaching at 3 different schools, I'm trying to write a novel, I'm taking a class to learn how to write television.
Alice: I'm teaching usually a full-load or close to it between two schools and I still do work on my own writing projects on the side, so I'm really happy for that. I'll still sometimes freelance for local papers or magazines. I also have still been writing my own fiction or my own work . . . it's really funny, I feel like I'll tell people, depending on the
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month and how many classes I pick up, I make from zero to a few thousand dollars. I don't necessarily know what that figures out to.
Megan: Well . . . I still owe a lot of money to the schools, that’s a little frustrating and my proposed full-time will be 2016 so once I’m full-time, I think that maybe I’ll have less frustration regarding, um, I guess I kinda wanna be validated for going back to school. I want to be validated financially and I want to be validated in the community college level where they’re like okay, you’re full-time, I mean, full-timers walk around like, you know, they’re very prestigious and I look up to them and I want to be them.
Jackie: Yeah. I thought that teaching would be my final career and I've got another 7 years that I'm paying into medical insurance which costs me an arm and a leg, $4,677 every 3 months with a $5,000 deductible each for my husband and I. My feelings right now are to look for another job and quit teaching just because there's no life, no benefits. I don't see anywhere to really grow or go anywhere with it.
A few participants also spoke of how little money they really make when factoring in the amount of time they spend grading:
Jackie: Then the union bashers, you know what? They're like, "Oh, you make so much per hour." Yeah. When I'm here in the classroom, I make so much per hour, and it's pretty good money if that's all I have to do. I did figure it out once, how much I make per hour. You don't want to hear this. It was between $2.50 and $3.25 an hour for the hours I work and the salary I'm bringing in.
Lilly: Particularly last semester, and the very first semester that I taught when I was sort of learning the ropes, I was putting in 90 hour weeks just trying to figure it out, and that was really hard on my husband who was frustrated that even though I was working so hard, I was not bringing in any money, really. At one point we did the calculations and I made more working at Starbucks than I did teaching,
Luna: Even when I taught new classes, it means I have to create all these assignments and I didn’t think that it was going to be that overwhelming. I was at home when I started crying and said, “I can’t take this. This is too much. I’m not getting paid for doing this stuff at home.” It was really hard. My husband is, “Just take a break.” It was a lot and I wasn’t expecting that at all.
Money was a big concern for many of the women, especially those who are single or contribute to the majority of their household income. A few participants spoke of the various extra jobs and training they are pursuing on top of teaching classes at community colleges in order to make extra money and to open more doors of opportunities. Others spoke of the desire
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Lastly, some women shared how little money they really do make when calculating the amount of hours put into prepping, grading and teaching classes.
Generation. Another issue that many participants spoke of was the recession that took place when many of the participants were new to the workforce and how that changed their direction and plans:
Jean: I didn’t really enjoy being a secretary but I wasn’t sure what to do so I decided, it was kind of a decision, I did give it some thought but I could teach ESL, I could do that but my plan was do adult ed, then eventually go to community college, so that didn’t happen because the recession hit right as I got out so that changed a lot of my direction.
Sheila: Then I began teaching high school and I taught at [High School] in Watts, CA for almost 4 years. Got laid off in 2009 when they had the big, huge lay-off when the recession hit and then decided at that point in time, since I couldn’t find work, I would go back to school, so I went back full-time and got two master’s degrees.
Jackie: I was working in the school district. They loved me. They're like, "We can't wait till you graduate, get you teaching here, blah, blah, blah." I'm subbing for everybody. I had regular people call me in. When I graduated, the bottom fell out of everything and they were laying teachers off. So there I was. Ten years of college and no job.
Cleindori: I didn’t know, perhaps, the difference of being an adjunct and a full-time professor at the time, so that has been more of a struggle, particularly since, what was it, the early 2000’s? mid-2000’s when we really saw the budget crash and getting enough work suddenly became more of a challenge, hence my list of five schools in the same semester because when I started doing this, I could be at 2, maybe 3 schools.
Lastly, one of the participants who was nearing retirement spoke of the difference in her generation versus current and future generations of women:
Knessa: You’re expected to be this brilliant person outside the home and this brilliant person inside the home and you’re expected to raise beautiful children and the stakes just keep getting higher for the woman, I think, so whatever I faced, I think my daughter is going to face much more in terms of expectation. It just doesn’t get less, whereas a man,
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the expectation is the same, in fact it’s actually much less because by the way you have a woman working now earlier. Like when my husband’s generation, the expectation was that he should support the family, that was the expectation on him, but now it’s like the expectation for the man is he just has to be 50/60% in the home and maybe he has to take care of the little children or something but it isn’t cut in stone so if a man doesn’t do it, it isn’t, but whereas a woman is so much different, she has to be the completely mythical creature in a way because she has to be perfect in so many fields, so I wonder how it’ll be for my daughter and my granddaughter, so I don’t complain that much, I don’t think I had it that bad actually.
Most of the participants began teaching around the time the recession hit in the mid-
2000’s and this affected a majority of the women. Many had planned on going into secondary education, but right around the time they graduated with their degrees, many of those potential jobs disappeared. This resulted in some women staying in school to obtain a master’s degree or turning toward higher education for employment. But regardless of what the participants ended up doing, the recession did create a major roadblock for many of them.
Another woman spoke of the difference in expectations generationally for women. She sees her daughter and granddaughter and envisions expectations getting greater for what women are required to do. She compares women to mythical creatures who have to be perfect in so many different areas and yet men are not set to the same standards in society.
Motivation. Although their jobs were not typically stable or monetarily sufficient, many participants had similar experiences of appreciating their part-time status on campuses in order to better balance their work and home life:
Sheila: The whole question of do I want to go full-time, do I want to stay adjunct, that’s been a big question for me. Because I probably could get hired full-time if I really wanted to do that, but I don’t know if I do. I think I like being, despite the negative aspects of being an adjunct, I like the freedom, I like the fact that I only have to work 2 days a week, that’s nice. I like that I get off work at 1 in the afternoon and I’m done for the day.
Megan: I didn’t expect to be making as much as I do to be a part-time teacher. I know it isn’t that much, but when I get to go drop off my kids and pick them up from school. . . go to the Christmas party, go to the Halloween parade. It might not seem like much to a
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non-mom, but to a mom, I feel very complete and the college is 2 blocks from both my daughters’ schools.
Sara: One of the benefits, I guess, of being in an adjunct position, I guess, is the scheduling is somewhat flexible more so than if I was working in a full-time capacity, and so I do cherish and value that time that I do get and like I said, there’s always a sacrifice, so I’m not saving as much as I want to but I’m spending time with my family and if I had to think about it and choose one or the other, I would feel guilty giving up that time away from my family and away from my friends and so I think that money can only do so much for you in life.
Alice: I think with the work that I've chosen to teach it's got- it's usually more flexible or at least not standard. It's not like the usual schedule. It's not necessarily eight hours a day, you might be working 8 hours, but it's not necessarily work 8 hours in an office, clock in and out kind of work. I feel like I really thrive in that flexibility, the fact that sometimes I might have something on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, or in the middle of the day, or at the times people don't usually have free time. Kind of lets me even just get things done at home, whether it's something that I want to work on for myself or just doing the laundry, or things like that. I think it can kind of give me more flexibility, more control over my schedule and more control over how I balance things my way.
Claire: I think once I went back to school and then I was teaching. It was easy to juggle things because my schedule was more flexible. I didn't have to be out of the house at 7 in the morning, so I could be in an office by 8, be stuck there until five, and then on the freeway until six. Now, that there is more, after I quit working full-time I had more flexibility and then I felt more successful being able to balance everything out, and do the things I needed to do.
Other women spoke of how important it is that their work is impactful which is part of their drive and motivation to get into teaching and to continue in the field:
Marie: I think being an older woman, I’m in my 50s, and I think teaching is a wonderful profession and that’s one of the reasons I was looking to make a change, not just to have more purpose but because technology is such a young man’s arena that I was thinking as I get older, do I want to remain in technology? Without going into management, which I had no interest in, so like I think teaching is such a great job because you can do it when you’re younger and you can do it when you’re older
Claire: I think more of my achievements are personal. Because I wanted to do it, and it's what I like. Most of the achievement for me is just really primarily personal. Study what I want to study, and those kinds of things. I don't have these dreams of being some kind of academic all-star out there. The little darling of the early modern studies world. I actually like teaching, I am happy teaching. Even though I like research, I think I lean a little more towards teaching.
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Jessica: I have to remind myself at the end of the day, teaching makes me happy and whether it be on a tenure-track basis or whether it be as a lecturer, you know, as long as I’m still teaching within the next few years, I’ll consider myself pretty satisfied.
Jackie: I have my kudos folder. I have my kudos folder so when a student gives me a card or writes me an email that says "you changed my life because of this because of that, whatever." I have students that I had 8 years ago and now they're my friend on Facebook. So yeah, I have my kudos folder and I should probably go read it. Because every time I get to that feeling like, "aargh," I pull out my kudos folder and I start reading the changes I've made in people's lives and then I go, "Okay. I can keep doing this. It's all right."
Luna: I save those emails. I print them out. I have a box and I put them in there. Because sometime when I feel like I just had enough and I don’t want to teach, I go back, I look at those emails and I read them and then, “This is why I’m doing all this. Whatever it is that you’re feeling, cut it out. You need to go back because they need you.”
Megan: In the same breath, yeah, do I feel guilty everyday and at the same time, yes, do I feel amazing like superwoman at the end of the day? Absolutely. Maybe that’s what drives my ego. Maybe that’s what drives me as a teacher, as an instructor and as a mom. Because you have other females that come up to you and say, you’re amazing and whether she means it or not, that little compliment says wow, I’m doing something right. Maybe it’s all worth it. Maybe feeling guilty all the time is worth it. Or you have parents of students who come up to you and are like it’s really a pleasure to see a mom out there. Little comments like that just drive you and you put all those little compliments together and you’re like yeah, I’m getting it done. You know? Being successful with one of my students and then you’re like yeah, I’m doing the right thing. Definitely.
Most of the participants who were younger than 45 expressed great concern and worry about obtaining a full-time position. This put a strain on many of their relationships and affected their quality time at home and this also seemed to affect their work-life balance because they were constantly dealing with schedules that would change from semester-to-semester and many felt they couldn’t say no to an assignment:
Alice: I know one thing I have learned about myself this past year that kind actually has something to do with my job, is I think I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to get a full-time job, partly because that was my expectation after college. I'm going to leave college, I'm going to work full-time at some place, a stable job. Hopefully I can still write or do things that I love on the side too . . . It's kind of hard to turn down work when you want people to be offering you more work. You want to make sure you still get work when you need it and like last semester I actually turned down a class because I thought it would be too many classes and too many hours and I would stress myself out
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and I was kind of proud of myself for politely saying no. Then I lost a class at the other school and I could've really used that work that I had just turned down and I couldn't get it back.
Francesca: Getting a full-time position, or, I have been very lucky with I’m okay where I’m at now, I’m okay. But sometimes I feel like an adopted puppy and I just want a forever home, like I just want to be somewhere and not worry about whether or not I’m going to get classes. I just want to be somewhere and that’s it, and just one place, pretty simple.
Faith: I guess I could say that my biggest frustration that I’ve had since I’ve become a mother is that it’s been much harder to focus on my career and even just on career goals and plans and what I want. That’s when my graduate study ended. Once I became a mother I stopped considering ever getting a PhD. Everything kind of came to a halt at that point.
Megan: In the next 5 years I plan on being at a CSU, 5 years I need to be out of the community college and at the Cal State Level. I do think of it that way. I have to be full time – I have to. I have to be full-time. I have to help out in the purchase of my home. I have to take some stress off of my husband financially. I don’t have a choice. If [current community college] doesn’t offer me full-time, I’ll have to move on to another school. . . . I have to get full-time within the next 2-3 years if not. I have to move on, if it’s moving on to another junior college. . .or have to move on to a high school to become a full-time athletic director. That would be my plan before I become too old.
Fiona: When I was probably 24, my husband he was my fiancé then I think, and I said that if when I turn 30, if I don't have a full-time teaching job, I want to seriously reevaluate being a college professor and potentially make a job move because I saw what adjuncting was and I didn't think that was something I wanted to do or fight for for the rest of my career. At 30 we evaluated it and we decided to give it a little bit longer so we'll see how it goes from there.
Many women spoke of how they tolerate being a part-time instructor. They spoke of the benefits of being an adjunct such as only having to work 2 days a week if they only teach on one campus, or being able to pick up their kids from school and to be able to attend their children’s holiday parties. Others spoke of the benefits of the flexibility in the scheduling of the position and how sometimes it does afford them more time with friends or family.
A few participants spoke of how impactful their work is and how a person can teach, even if they’re in their 50s, as one participant mentioned, because teaching is something people
106 of varying ages can do. Others mentioned how much they actually enjoy teaching and how they sometimes have to remind themselves that they get to do something they like, even if they aren’t professionally where they’d like to be or are not compensated as well as they had hoped. And many participants agreed that at the end of the day, they are pretty satisfied that they get to teach.
Some participants spoke of receiving recognition from students or other women who compliment them on how well they’re doing, and those are the little things that help make it worthwhile.
Some women spoke of their frustration with still being an adjunct faculty member and how they really need to get hired on as a full-time professor because they are tired of worrying about their schedules and how many classes they will get every semester. One participant spoke about how her dreams of obtaining a doctorate degree ended when she had children and another participant spoke of the timeline she has given herself to get a full-time position and how she may have to make a career change soon.
Relationships. As previously noted, relationship style refers to the way a person relates to others and the nature of a person’s relationship with a significant other or family members
(Giele, 2008). Overall, it was discovered that relationships are a major priority for most of these women. When they felt that they were ignoring or not giving enough attention to the relationships most important to them, they reported feeling imbalanced and unhappy. Most of the women credited their support systems such as spouses, friendships, and family to helping them be balanced.
One participant spoke of how important her relationships are to her and how she does not need to be married or have children to feel fulfilled:
Sara: I’m almost 40 now, 20 some years have passed since I graduated college and so I’ve evolved and I’ve changed and I can say this whole heartedly with all sincerity that I’m not the same person that I used to be and my life experiences have made me who the person I am today, as everyone, but I think I have succeeded in terms of family because I
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don’t look at family in that societal way that we look at family. I have people who love me, I have family who loves me, I have friends who love me, they support me, they’re there for me and I don’t need, necessarily, I don’t need a spouse to validate me anymore and it’s so liberating.
Other participants spoke of the stress work and extra schooling can place on relationships and how difficult it can be to balance both:
Lilly: Last semester I taught six classes and I had no time to be a human. I was a terrible friend, I was not very good to myself and I decided to never ever do that again because even though it was nice to make some extra money, the cost of my relationships was not worth it, so I have goals like that to actually be a decent good person.
Luna: It’s hard, especially because it’s been almost a year that I haven’t gone out on a date with my husband. He tells me that, “When are we going to go out?” Sometimes he’ll work the weekends. I’ll have grading.
Jackie: As far as my husband goes, he's pretty easy. He likes to fish, sit on the La-Z-Boy in front of the TV and he's working. We've been together so long. We're okay but it'd be nice to spend more time. We try to sit down and eat dinner together every night. Definitely that and maybe try and go do something on Sunday afternoon. Depending on how much grading I have done, it's either a half an hour walk or we get to go out or whatever. It's all dependent on grading, the time I spend with him.
Jean: I mean, I don’t know if it’s anything. I think my social let me, my friendship suffered. I lost touch with a lot of people during the time I was in school and during the time my family was undergoing all these changes, so yeah, I just yeah, I lost touch with a lot of people. You couldn’t do it all. And I had family and I had school and then I had work, so I was going to school part-time, working full-time and then taking care of all the issues.
Claire: When it comes to dating, I was just like out of time, and no I don't want to get involved with anyone, because I need to focus on school. Yeah. That is it because school, teaching and all that stuff, and family. I was like I can't fit anything else in. I think that has suffered. Like dating, and just my social life.
Megan: I think that maybe sometimes I feel that my job isn’t as important as his job because I’m not the breadwinner, so to speak, I’m not the leader in finances. Okay, the kid is sick? You’re taking the day off, not him. I can’t meet up to his financial standards, what he’s making, so who’s taking the day off? Who has to call their boss? Who has to go in late? Who has to leave early? It’s me. It’s a mom. And I’m okay with that. I don’t want to lose the female, feminine mom role, I don’t want to lose that. I always want to be a mom first, a wife second and then a teacher, in that order. . . but sometimes I feel like, hey, I have a job too, I’m important here too.
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Some women spoke of the help they receive from their husbands:
Luna: If I have grading to do, “Don’t worry. I’m going to cook.” He does the cooking. He helps out a lot. I’m very, very lucky to have him. I appreciate him and I just want thank you. Thank you so much.
Fiona: My husband 100% supports what I'm doing, he sees the need for me to be out teaching and he's often said it makes me a better mother and it will make me a better home school mom. My in-laws 100% support me. My parents 100% support me.
Many participants expressed how it can be difficult to maintain a work-life balance when family members are ill or need help.
Jean: People don’t realize is when you’re in your 50s and 60s and your parents are elderly, the amount of time that that actually takes and your life is not paramount which I think you would relate to, as a parent, because your kid’s going to have to come first, other things are going to take the back burner.
Jessica: My dad had issues with his health. There was a period of time where he just had ailment after ailment after ailment such as stroke and he had this aneurism but he’s okay now . . . I think maybe the closest I felt pressured to making a choice between [work and family] would be during the time in which my dad was going through a number of health issues and that was, I mean, simply because I was taking a lot of time off work to attend you know, to take care of him and to you know, attend his surgeries and what-not.
Jackie: I've had brother-in-law in and out of the hospital for 3 years, almost dying several times because of smoking and alcoholism. My husband had a heart attack so I'm sitting in the hospital with him and then my mom almost died on me and in and out of the hospital with her. My dad was bedridden for 6 months. Yes, I've been through a lot of that. Lot of sitting with them.
Relationships were very important to the women in this study. Many spoke of how important their families are to them and how one does not necessarily need a husband or children to feel fulfilled. Other participants spoke about the stress work can place on relationships and how difficult it can be to balance both home life with work obligations. One woman who is single spoke of the difficulty she has in finding time to date and how her social life has suffered.
A few women spoke of the amount of help they receive from their significant others and how much it has helped them with juggling the demands of work and life. Others spoke of how
109 hard it can be to balance it all when someone has sick family members and their time is now also being spent at hospitals or helping ill parents.
Mentors. Mentors often play an important role in a person’s professional life and can greatly influence a person’s career. However, a majority of participants claimed that they did not have any type of mentor or only had a few fellow colleagues that had somewhat acted as mentors but were parallel in career paths and experience:
Faith: I’d say my mentors have been different women who I’ve met throughout my different teaching jobs that I’ve had who had become close personal friends of mine. So most of the women that I have taught side-by-side with have become mentors to me, so yeah, and who are now I’d consider best friends of mine.
Jill: I haven't had a lot. I've really wanted some, and I haven't had a lot. For some reason, it seems like I've been destined to really do a lot of things on my own. I keep wanting mentors.
Mollie: I haven’t really had any mentors. I’ve been flying solo. I have colleagues who are at the same level as me who are very helpful but I don’t have a mentor necessarily of anybody who is higher than me giving their experience.
Jackie: I guess the person that got my foot in the door over here, got people call me. I mean she was doing well handholding going "You can do this, you can go there." Other than that, none. I don't really look at anybody and just go, "Oh, I want to be like you and you help me." I mentor a lot of people. I like to mentor but I'm not usually in the mentee spot.
Although some women in the study did mention that they had mentors to help them, these were typically mentors the participants had while students in undergraduate or graduate school:
Claire: Mentors? I don't know if I have had anyone that has sort of mentored me through the whole process. I've had teachers that I have kind of looked up to, and thought, yeah, that's what I want to do, that's the kind of teacher I want to be, or you know, that is what I want to study.
Fiona: This professor sought me out and it was with him, he took me under his wing, he helped me figure out okay I need to start presenting at conferences, he looked over my abstracts when I submitted them to present, he was a sounding board when I was throwing out ideas for potential articles for publication . . . He really was just, basically
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my biggest cheerleader telling me not to give up and it was nice because he had gone through some of the same things so he had the ability to tell me how it really was where I was looking at it from a very narrow grad student perspective who hadn't been out in the academic world.
Jessica: There are two mentors that I am still in touch with. I had this professor back when I was a graduate student and he and I still keep in touch today and he has actually informed a lot of my own teaching philosophies and I borrow or shamelessly steal much of his lectures concerning writing strategies and one of my friends from grad school, I consider her a mentor as well, namely because her and I finished school around the same time and we started teaching around the same time and it’s always been, you know, in a position where we sort of lean on each other for support and of course I do have mentors at my current position, but I find myself going back to those first two that I had mentioned, probably namely because they’ve seen me, the very beginning when I was really, really green as an instructor.
Cleindori: At the university level I think I had some mentors just in terms of other professors and their kinds of lives, but they were university professors so that was a big difference. They were kind of mentoring me on a career path that I didn’t end up going on. And once I started teaching as an adjunct, the first college I worked for had almost no support at all for adjuncts. It was like I could show up, teach my classes and never see anyone all semester other than my students.
Two participants, who both happened to be involved on campus as a coach as well as a part-time instructor, spoke specifically of people at their community college that had acted as mentors:
Bev: [Mentor], who I introduced you to, she kind of did the same thing, she played here and then she, she was part-time here and then now has been full-time for a long time now, like 15 to 20 years, but I would say she’s the biggest one who kind of guides me along the way, but I’d say a lot of full-time instructors here, because I’ve known them all a long time, do a great job and I think our department does a great job of helping each other out in general, especially because it’s kind of like a coaching, so everyone’s into what everyone else’s team is doing, so then you kind of have a good rapport with everybody, I guess.
Megan: Well, [Mentor 1] and [Mentor 2] really encouraged me just to get back in school and they wanted me to finish my master’s in English and I just kept refusing and refusing and one day [Mentor 2] was like, what are you going to do? She was almost kind of crude about it but I look back and it was back in 2013, yeah, 2013, and I was in class tutoring for her and her and [Mentor 1] and even you, you, you guys gave me this idea of empowerment almost of like females in the classroom or females at the community college level and I just felt like, they’re doing it, they’re really doing it and there’s hope and you don’t have to be 80 to be successful because that’s what college professors are
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like, you know, you hold a sense of empowerment and you’re so great in the classroom that I felt why don’t I do that on the athletic side of the classroom. And then mentor wise I also had a lot a lot a lot of coaches that have pushed me and pushed me and pushed me. That’s where I’m at now.
Most women who participated in this study did not report having mentors at their community college who helped them with their job or training. The women who did mention having mentors were typically mentors found while in college or graduate school and were in the form of professors. Some women did acknowledge that they had co-workers who would help them if they had questions or needed help, but they were typically colleagues that were also part- time and had parallel career trajectories. However, two participants who were involved in both coaching and teaching on their campuses had the highest levels of mentorship with coaches who were full-time as well as a deeper sense of belonging with their campus and fellow co-workers.
Work-life balance. The final theme examined the participants’ work-life balance and asked them about their experiences and struggles to successfully maintain a work-life balance.
Some women felt that they were balancing things pretty well:
Sheila: I think I have reached a point where I’m able to maintain a balance between the two that keeps me happy and keeps everyone else happy as well.
Sara: I think I’m feeling successful right now because I don’t have so much on my plate. If you had asked me this question when I was working full-time and going to grad school then the answer would have been no, I’m not, but I feel like I am successful only because I have the sheer time on my side right now and I know time is an asset. It’s just one of those things, it’s probably the most important commodity that anyone can have. If you have time you have the world at your fingertips and so I think I’m juggling my work and family pretty well maybe because I have time on my side right now.
Fiona: I have to say with the birth of our third child, I don't want to get too prideful but I'm feeling pretty good. I feel like maybe I've worked out a system. It only took me a couple years and 3 kids but I think the getting up earlier, the doing my grading in my downtime, if I have a spare 10 minutes before class starts, I'm grading 2 papers or something. So just always having stuff to do with me, it's made me feel like kind of like super mom, like maybe I can do this. But then there are times that I fail miserably so I don't know. This past semester was really good but who knows if I can keep it up.
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Bev: You can get everything done and it will all balance out if you, again, prioritize and plan and stay steady with what you’re doing type of thing.
Other participants spoke of their issues with maintaining a work-life balance:
Faith: I feel like my work has suffered because of, I feel like I could at this point be a little further in my career as far as working full-time but I’ve chosen to continue to give that time to my family, so I would say I don’t know if suffering is the right word. I’ve chosen to dedicate less time to work and put it toward my young family right now with the hopes that one day it won’t be so. I’ll have more time.
Knessa: I think I’ve managed, but I don’t think I’ve ever considered myself extremely successful in the work or the home. I think it’s just been managing in both and that’s been success that I just about managed, that’s all.
Jill: I'm past work/life balance. I just need to not be busting my ass. You know what I mean? I'm busting my ass, and I need to not be busting my ass. My body's breaking down. I'm tired a lot, because I'm running all over the place. I'm taking on more work than I should have to because I'm afraid of the next semester and if I'll have enough work. It's a combination of just, like I said, supporting myself, accept some level of financial security and comfort long-term, and also achieving some semblance of happiness and fulfillment and not running myself ragged in the process.
Mollie: I mean, you always have to make the choice whether you’re going to work this night or if you’re going to spend time with family that night, so those always pop up and we have had discussions because we’re thinking about having a family am I going to stay home or not stay home. The question never comes up if he’s going to stay home, that’s never the question, the issue is always whether I’m going to stay home or not and how we’re going to make that work. But I never feel pressure to choose between the two. It’s always a pressure to make both work. As opposed to choosing.
Jackie: I feel like I'm pulling my hair out. It's a love-hate thing. It's totally a love-hate thing. I have a passion for it or I wouldn't still be here but then I want a life. I can see how teachers burn out.
Cleindori: That is always a difficult one, particularly when I’ve had to do things like pick up a last minute class or something that changes my entire schedule, well, looks like Saturday afternoons are gone, you know, or I’m going to take that night class which may impinge upon time that would otherwise been used for family, so those types of choices are difficult and admittedly, I almost always choose work. It’s been very rare that I’ve been able, or comfortable saying, I’m not going to do this. There have been a couple times over the last 2 years where I’ve said no, I’m not going to take a sixth class or I’m not going to take that class and let’s see what else I can find.
Billie: I think we talk a lot about just life, work, balance, but just hearing myself talk I realize that that means a lot of different things to different people. There's not one
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juggling act. There are many juggling acts and there are many little decisions that go into the bigger decisions about balance.
When asked about their work-life balance, some women felt confident in how they were juggling everything. Some felt they had reached a point where they could maintain a balance to keep themselves and those around them happy. Others contributed a feeling of balance to always having grading with them so that they were constantly being productive and getting ahead of the grading. Some contributed this to the fact that they were only working in a part-time capacity and they felt that is was possible to maintain a balance as long as they were organized and had a plan.
However, others felt that they were not feeling successful in their careers. One participant felt as though she should be farther along with a full-time career but that she had been sidelined with caring for her young daughters and going through a divorce. Another woman reported that she has always felt as though she’s just managing everything but is never particularly successful. Others felt very tired and that they were running themselves ragged trying to maintain a semblance of balance. One participant spoke of the struggle to decide whether to take a last minute class if it is offered and how that can throw her semester and work schedule off balance. Lastly, one woman summed it up best when she said that work-life balance means a lot of different things to different people and how many little, tiny decisions go into each bigger decision about balance.
Additional Findings
By using NVivo, the researcher was able to examine the themes and amount of references as a way to view an overall image of the results. Participants most frequently referenced identity
(254), drive and motivation (247), socioeconomics (201), and relational style (119) with all 20 having referenced those themes. Eighteen of the participants mentioned mentors (33) but the
114 number of times they referenced mentors was very low, indicating that mentors did not play a very strong role in the participants’ lives or they simply did not have mentors at all. A summary of the number of responses and references to themes is presented in Table 2.
Summary of Findings
Findings indicated that the women who participated in this study were impacted by their family, friends and spousal support, had drive to achieve a master’s degree and possibly a doctorate degree, aspired to obtain a full-time teaching position or to retire soon, and had many financial security worries.
Table 2
NVivo Analysis of the Number of Responders and References to the Themes
Theme Number of respondents Number of data references
Adaptive style 20 97
Coping strategies 20 93
Drive and motivation 20 247
Ethnicity 11 20
Identity 20 254
Mentors 18 33
Relational style 20 119
Socioeconomics 20 201
Work-life balance 20 158
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Regardless of whether a participant was married and had children, was single, or had grown children who lived outside the home, the participants all spoke of the different struggles they faced to juggle the demands of both work and life. However, many shared the coping strategies they use to attempt to have a better work-life balance.
Chapter 5 gives background on the women who chose to participate in this study, discusses the key findings from the research, and expresses the issues female adjunct faculty members are facing who work at community colleges in Southern California. This study utilized
Giele’s (2010) life story framework and the findings will discuss how identity, relationships, drive and motivation, and adaptive style influenced the participants’ lives. Furthermore, key findings on the role of coping strategies, socioeconomics, mentors and ethnicity will help to understand how these women maintain a work-life balance.
This qualitative study of the lives of female adjunct faculty members at community colleges in Southern California contributed to the lack of knowledge on female adjunct members and addressed gaps in the research. The results provided insight into the difficulties they encounter as well as the great goals and drive these women have. The findings helped establish an understanding into the unique role a female adjunct plays on a community college campus, her role and strategies for balancing work and life at home, and aims to guide other female adjuncts on how to cope with the plurality of roles they hold and to develop strategies to improve their work-life balance.
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Chapter 5: Conclusion
Overview of the Study
This qualitative, phenomenological study explored the lives of female adjunct faculty members at Southern California community colleges and how they balanced their home and work life. This study examined the demographics and the life experiences of female adjunct professors as well as their coping strategies for balancing work and life.
This qualitative study had two purposes. The first purpose was to explore the life experiences, through one semi-structured interview, of female adjunct faculty members to understand the difficulties they encounter. A second purpose to this study was to discover what strategies they employ in order to balance work and home.
A total of 20 female adjunct faculty members were interviewed for this study. This study used the life course theory framework by Giele (2008) to understand the participants’ background as well as the impact of major life events. This study also aimed to see how identity, motivation and drive, adaptive and relational styles relate to female adjunct members balancing work and home (Giele, 2008; Weber, 2011).
The research questions that guided the study are:
1. How do female adjunct instructors at Southern California community colleges describe
their life course as being influenced by identity structure, relationship style, drive,
motivation and adaptive style?
2. What coping strategies are female adjuncts in community colleges using in able to
maintain a work-life balance?
3. What demographic factors (age, ethnicity, socioeconomics, first generation) of female
adjunct instructors are associated with the life story elements (identity, adaptations,
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motivation, and relationships) that impact the work-life balance of female part-time
instructors?
Demographics
Each of the participants in this study has worked at a community college for at least 3 years and varies in martial status and number of children they are raising. Ten of the participants are married, eight are single and four of the single women had been divorced. Three women have live-in partners, including one woman who had previously been divorced. Ten of the participants have children: three have one child, five have two children, two have three children and two of the participants are currently pregnant.
Various ethnicities, ages, amount of hours worked per week and number of schools they were employed at were also represented. Twelve of the participants are Caucasian, three are
Hispanic, one is African American, one is Filipino, one is Korean, one is South Asian and one is
Asian Indian.
The women in this study also represented four decades. Four women were born in the
1950s, three in the 1960s, six in the 1970s, and seven in the 1980s. Three reported working less than 10 hours per week, three work between 10 and 15 hours per week, seven work between 16 and 20 hours per week, five work between 24 and 30 hours per week and two work more than 30 hours per week. Also, eight participants only work at one community college, seven work at two community colleges, three work at three community colleges, one works at four community colleges and one works at five community colleges. Nine women make up 100% of their household income, six make up between 40 to 60% of their household income, and five make up less than 35% of their household income. It is significant to note that although these women are technically working part-time hours, almost half of them are responsible for their entire
118 household income. All of the women who claim 100% income are single or have been divorced except for one participant who is married and living a polyamorous lifestyle with multiple partners. Her husband is a homemaker and she spoke of the interesting pull she feels to provide for not only herself, but also for a spouse. As a woman growing up, most of the participants spoke of their need to obtain an education so they could support themselves, but the necessity to provide as the head of a household was not something that all these women felt particularly comfortable or prepared for.
Regardless of marital status, these women are in a difficult position because they are employed in a position that is categorized as part-time and earning part-time hours. As Slaughter
(2015) states, many women in low-paying jobs today are suffering from too much flexibility because there is no guarantee of the number of hours per semester a part-time adjunct will be assigned. This puts a strain on these women both financially and emotionally as they struggle to obtain any last-minute class assignments which can result in being overworked and with little time for themselves. This also connects to the broader idea that women are still consistently being underpaid, in comparison to men, and are often displaced and undervalued in the workplace because women are about twice as likely as men to hold a non-tenure track position
(Schuster & Finklstein, 2006). Also, since contingent faculty members are considered second class citizens in just about every aspect, this represents the feminization of poverty since the majority of those adjuncts who are underpaid and undervalued are women (Wolfinger et al.,
2009).
Findings in Relationship to Existing Literature
The following sections discuss main themes in the findings and relate these findings to the literature covered in the literature review. These themes include identity and how it is
119 affected by career choices, relational style, drive and motivation, adaptive style, coping strategies, work-life balance, and mentorship.
Identity
Identity refers to how a person identifies with race, ethnicity, social class, and is similar or to or different from family members (Giele, 2002). The findings related to the first research question demonstrate that the participants were greatly shaped by all of these demographics and also had different education than their family members. The majority of women in the study
(14/20) were the first in their family to attend college and many did so because of various pressures. Some women became college educated because they wanted a different life and educational path than their parents, specifically their mothers who often had very little education and were left with few options for employment and often ended up divorced and struggling to raise their children. Other women obtained higher education due to pressure from migrant parents.
As the literature suggests, students who attend community college are typically first- generation college students and they tend to come from working-class backgrounds (Connelly &
Ghodsee, 2014). Thirteen of the 20 participants were the first in their family to attend college at a community college, and they also obtained a graduate degree. As the literature states, this was made possible because community colleges traditionally serve academically underprepared and historically marginalized students, such as minorities and women, so they can have access to higher education (Cohen & Brawer, 2008; Townsend & Twombly, 2007). Only two of the participants had one parent that obtained a college degree, while four of the participants had grown up with two parents who had a college degree and out of the those four, two participants
120 had parents who had both obtained a master’s degree and one who had singularly obtained a master’s degree.
Many of the women spoke about their education, specifically their master’s degrees, and how proud they were of this accomplishment. This degree is also what opened the door for them to be employed at a community college, something that many of them did not anticipate they would ever be doing.
These women identify themselves through different outlets than just their job title.
Although the women were proud of their higher education degree, their current part-time status does not accurately represent how hard many worked to achieve a teaching position in higher education. This seems to be because teaching at the community college level provides more status and perceived level of achievement for many women, even in a part-time role, and can also be a level of achievement that many had not considered possible for themselves (Townsend,
1995a, 1995b; Seidman, 1985). Many women in this study had initially worked in K-12 education or had goals of working within secondary education, but due to budget cuts and the recession, they had to change their career plan and teaching at a community college seems more elite and like a bigger accomplishment than staying in K-12 education for many women.
Relational Style
This study sought to examine how female adjunct faculty members’ life course was influenced by relationships (Giele, 2002). The findings in this study correlated with the research that community colleges tend to be more family friendly because women who work in community colleges are typically more likely to have not only professional fulfillment but are also able to obtain personal goals such as having a family (Cohen & Brawer, 2008; Townsend,
1998; Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006). Halpern and Cheung (2008) have also reported that women
121 who choose employment outside of the home are typically healthier and happier than those who choose not to, which correlates with the experiences of the women in this study. All of the women in this study spoke of how much they enjoy what they do and only one participant spoke of how her husband mentioned she could be a stay-at-home mom if she would like to be one. A majority of the participants who have children acknowledged the necessity of family members and partners to help them with work and home life. Many of the women spoke about how much more difficult it would be for them to juggle their workload and home life without the amount of help they receive from others.
Although many of the women seem to maintain some semblance of close relationships with their immediate family and partners, some participants spoke of how their friendships and social lives changed and how many of their friendships fractured as they became more educated and busy with work and home. Another area of concern for a majority of women in this study is the lack of relationships that are made among colleagues. As the literature suggests, there is a shrinking interconnected atmosphere on college campuses due to the higher number of transient workers, such as adjunct professors. This tends to affect women the most because women typically place higher value on connecting with others and many researchers have discovered that one of the key elements to faculty satisfaction is having a sense of community with colleagues (Astin, 1991; Astin & Davis, 1993; Boice, 1993; Johnsrud & Wunsch, 1991; Fox,
1991; Olsen & Sorcinelli, 1992; Olsen et al., 1995; Riger et al., 1997; Tierney & Bensimon,
1996). The women in this study were very clear in their desire for mentorship or to become closer to their colleagues, but many simply do not have access to colleagues because they arrive on campus, teach their classes, and then leave. This does not foster a favorable environment or ability to make friendships or deep connections to colleagues. As an adjunct herself, this
122 researcher also feels that there is a serious lack of mentorship and help from fellow colleagues which tends to make an adjunct position feel very isolating and sterile. There is typically no sense of community or friendships among colleagues on campus, and this makes adjuncts feel as if they do not hold much merit or importance to the campus.
Drive and Motivation
The findings for the third theme revolved around drive and motivation. Giele (2008) discusses drive and motivation as a woman’s need to have achievement, affiliation, and power.
Although not all of the women in the study spoke of their desire for full-time work, a majority
(14/20) of the women did repeatedly speak of their drive and motivation to be hired somewhere full-time. The six who did not speak of wanting full-time work were all in their late 50s or early
60s and instead spoke of their impending retirement. Full-time work was an area that actually seemed to distress some of the participants and a few commented on how they were sounding like a broken record and they seemed a little shocked by how many times they spoke about their drive for a full-time position.
Many of the participants also spoke of their motivation to continue their schooling and desire to obtain either a doctorate degree or take additional classes just for growth and enjoyment. However, others spoke of their worry that they might be forced to take on additional degrees in order to stay current and competitive within their field. Those who spoke of this worried that they would not have the time or financial capacity to go back to school to get another degree.
One of the largest recurring themes that came from the participants’ interviews was that these women are typically motivated by their pure love of teaching and helping their students learn. Most of the women spoke about how they typically are not rewarded by colleagues or
123 their department chairs, but they feel rewarded when a student gives them a nice note or tells them how helpful they have been.
The results in this study confirm that the majority of adjuncts would prefer to teach full- time. Jacoby (2006) found that about 55.4% of contingent faculty members want full-time employment and 70% of the participants in this study were hoping for a tenure-track position in the near future. Mason and Ekman (2007) also discuss that successful mothers tend to say they have an ambitious nature, have physical stamina, and also just say that they are lucky. The participants in this study who were mothers also claim to be hard workers and to just manage whatever comes at them.
Although community colleges are viewed as a way for women to gain opportunity and to work within higher education, their careers tend to stall and fail to move forward to a full-time position. There are not many full-time positions open in any given school year, but this is not the only thing holding women back from full-time positions. There is also a huge lack of mentorship to help adjuncts with the application process. Many women are intimidated by the hiring process and could benefit from some guidance and support. It is also very difficult for many adjuncts to participate in campus meetings and activities. Though it is not a requirement for an adjunct to participate on campus, it is something that is viewed favorably, and weighed heavily, when one applies for a full-time position. Those adjuncts who work at multiple campuses, and are balancing many classes, typically miss out on the opportunity and time to participate in campus activities which could help an adjunct meet other faculty and feel more comfortable on campus.
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Adaptive Style
The fourth theme looked at the adaptive style of female adjunct faculty members. As the literature suggests, many adjunct faculty teach at multiple campuses, which results in carrying significant teaching loads but without the same support from colleagues and administrators that tenure-track faculty have (Kezar, 2012). Twelve of the participants in this study teach at two or more community colleges which contradicts Leslie and Gappa (2002) who claim that less than
20% of adjunct are categorized as freeway flyers and that there is an exaggeration in the media about the volume of adjunct faculty who are actually teaching at multiple institutions each semester. Adjuncts also have to be adaptive in figuring things out for themselves on campus because most adjuncts are not involved in curriculum development, governance, or advisement, and this can leave them with a significant lack of connection to the institution, which can create a tendency for adjuncts to be transient (Avakian, 1995; Brewster & Padavic, 2000; Danley-Scott &
Tompsett-Makin, 2013). The participants in this study confirmed this research by acknowledging that a majority of them have never had a mentor or mentor-like figure. Mentors are typically necessary for someone to have a role model for work-related influences, inspiration, encouragements, affirmation and someone to instill confidence (Anderson & Ramey, 1990;
Cullen & Luna, 1993; Nye, 1997). Since so many of the participants have not had any type of mentor while in a professional field, it is clear that they have had to adapt and adjust to their work settings without the help and guidance from someone else. All of the participants have been teaching as an adjunct for at least 3 years and one participant mentioned that she had been teaching for over 11 years. An adjunct’s job varies semester-by-semester since they are not contracted beyond a semester so most adjunct faculty reported feeling pressured to take any
125 classes offered because a class could be dropped at the last moment for low enrollment or given to another professor.
The women interviewed also mentioned the difficult times they have gone through such as divorces and becoming an instructor later in life. A few women also spoke of having to adapt to having a child during the semester and the difficulties of finding a comfortable, private place to pump since they were breastfeeding their children. Two participants spoke of pumping in their cars because they did not have an office or anywhere else to privately pump. One of the participants was pregnant during her interview and she spoke of her worry with having to take a semester off to have the baby and losing out on that income. Though many participants did not speak of an expectation for maternity leave, there was definitely a stressor on pregnant adjuncts to try and time out the birth of their child during a summer or winter term, or to just accept the fact that they will have to give up an entire semester’s worth of classes if they have a child during the fall or spring semester. There also are not many accommodations for a woman to pump while at work since adjuncts typically do not have any type of office space. These are large issues that should be examined so female adjuncts will not feel as if they have such limited options for having a child and also for accommodating a mother who chooses to breastfeed and needs to pump at work.
Coping Strategies
The second research question sought to examine what coping strategies female adjuncts in community colleges use to maintain a work-life balance. Since this topic has been so rarely researched and discussed, there are not many coping strategies that have been identified in the literature for female adjuncts at community colleges (Wolgemuth et al., 2003; Wolf-Wendel et al., 2007). However, some of the literature focuses on strategies that women in academia use to
126 maintain a work-life balance such as for a woman to pace herself so she does not wear herself out or burn out, that women need to recognize that there is a light at the end of the tunnel after the tough years with young children at home, and simply to continue working harder (Bagilhole,
1994; Mason & Ekman, 2007). The results in this study also confirm that it is necessary to have a supportive partner, supportive network of family and friends, and great time management skills
(Mason & Ekman, 2007).
Many of the participants shared similar coping mechanisms in order to maintain a better work-life balance including time management, organization, and family support. Organization was one of the most important elements for these women to maintain some semblance of balance within their home and work life. Another way that the participants coped with work and life was by participating in enjoyable activities such as reading, exercise, socialization, listening to music and setting aside time for themselves. It is very important for women to take care of themselves, which can be very difficult, but is one of the most consistent coping strategies given during this study.
Faith. Faith is also very important to many of these women and many identify themselves through their faith and relationship. These women spoke of the importance of prayer and their connection to God and the experiences that led them to this deep faith. One woman became much more faith-oriented after 9/11 because, as a Muslim, she felt that her faith was being attacked. Another woman spoke of how she went through a divorce and changed jobs and these huge life changes helped her get closer to her faith. Ultimately, faith was a key factor for many women in how they were able to cope through very stressful times in their lives.
The participants’ ethnicities and religion also played a role in how well they balance work and home because prayer and belief in God allowed the women to feel balanced and calm.
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Many of the women who were born into an ethnicity where faith was very important to their culture demonstrated how significant their religion still is to them. A deep belief in faith was also a way for many women to gather strength when dealing with a tough class, schedule, or personal issues.
Saying no. It was discovered that many women have worked to maintain a better work- life balance by simply learning to say no and leaving grading and planning undone on the weekends if they had plans. It is also difficult for many women to balance their household duties as well as raising children and teaching. They reported feeling exhausted and sometimes overwhelmed. Ultimately, the struggle to maintain a successful work and home life is an ongoing process that most women are continuously working at and striving to achieve.
Work-life Balance
The third research question sought to understand what, if any, demographic factors impact the work-life balance of female adjunct instructors. The results in this study confirm that age plays a significant role in how well a woman feels she is balancing children, home, and work because “older” women studied (those in their late 40s through early 60s) did not have any major worries about balancing home and work; however, it is worth noting that these women most likely did not have the same policies or expectations as women today such as maternity leave, and they managed without it (Acker & Armenti, 2004). The women in this study also confirmed that just as childcare falls to women, so does eldercare, and that as a woman ages, she must now take care of elderly parents and this can cause a disruption in her work-life balance (Doress-
Worters, 1994). Age plays a significant role in the way the women in the study maintain a work- life balance. Those who are in their mid-550s to early 60s were not worried about a full-time position but instead were focusing on retirement and participating in activities purely for
128 enjoyment and fulfillment. The other participants, except one woman in her mid-fifties who is obtaining a PhD and one woman in her early 60s who is obtaining her EdD, are focusing on their career goals and obtaining full-time status. The age of the participants tended to play an important role in how driven and career-oriented the women are. The older participants also did not have young children at home, which alleviated much of the stress and balance younger participants were going through who had younger children at home.
This study also confirms that adjunct faculty members are paid less than full-time, tenure track positions and adjunct positions almost never include benefits like health insurance, sick leave, and parent paid leave (Connelly & Ghodsee, 2014). Some of the women in this study feel exploited or manipulated both financially and in relation to career aspirations and instead would like to be viewed as valued members of their community college (Avakian, 1995; Dolan et al.,
2013). This study also confirms that many adjunct members discover that after many years of schooling and the degrees they have obtained, that their current positions are not meeting their expectations which can lead to levels of bitterness and frustration by part-time adjunct faculty
(Feldman & Turnley, 2004). Many of the adjuncts in this study confirmed that they teach about the same amount, or more, of classes that full-time faculty teach, but they are not eligible for benefits and are paid less than their full-time counterparts (Halcrow & Olson, 2008).
This study also showed that although adjuncts are typically underpaid and overqualified, tenure-track faculty positions are extremely scarce. Respondents view adjunct positions as the only way to remain in the field (Mason & Ekman, 2007). Townsend and Hauss (2002) found that over 50% of contingent faculty would prefer to continue teaching rather than quitting the profession and this correlated with the women in this study who consolidated themselves with
129 the knowledge that even if they don’t become full-time, at least they are doing something they enjoy and love.
Although the literature shows that many women have high levels of frustration with the second shift they encounter (the amount of work they do at home when they get home from work), the women in this study were typically very grateful and appreciative of their spouses and the level of family support they received. However, though the second shift is seen as a main component in the literature of why women are continuously underrepresented in faculty and university administrative positions, the women in this study are merely struggling to obtain a full-time position and do not seem to have the same struggles and time requirements as the women in the literature.
The study also confirms that women juggling both careers and motherhood almost always experience some type of remorse or mother’s guilt, yet both the literature and the women in this study confirmed that it is very important to learn how to say no, to use time management skills, and to recognize that neither working or parenting can be done perfectly (Mason & Ekman,
2007). However, it is important to note that regardless of if a woman has children, is married, or is single, she is still struggling to maintain a work-life balance because housework, personal lives, and elder care have to be maintained even with a professional career (Acker &
Feuerverger, 1996).
Lastly, this study confirms that it is easier to have a good work-life balance once the role of a parent becomes less demanding as well as the amount of time spent in a position (Latz &
Rediger, 2013). The women in this study had been teaching for at least 3 years and many mentioned how difficult it had been in the first few years to acclimate themselves to the demands
130 of work and home life. The longer they have taught, typically, the better the participants felt they were balancing work and life.
The women in the study contributed some of their ability to maintain a work-life balance to the fact that they are employed as a part-time faculty member and this alleviates the requirement to attend department meetings, be on committees, and to work long hours on campus. However, working part-time also creates economic problems for women because their schedules fluctuate on a semester-to-semester basis and there is no guarantee of a set salary or amount of classes. The amount of money an adjunct makes per hour, including grading and prepping, is actually a very small amount and creates an added level of stress.
The recession that took place in the mid-2000’s also greatly affected the participants.
Most of them were just graduating when the economic crash happened, and suddenly jobs disappeared or opportunities were not as abundant as previously believed. This affected the life course of the women because their careers did not pan out the way they had hoped. Many participants were able to achieve a positive work-life balance due simply to the fact that they worked less hours per day and had more freedom of time. Those with children also reported that they could attend their children’s school activities, which is not something that many full-time employees can always achieve.
Although many participants contributed their ability to better maintain a work-life balance due to family help, the strain of working, especially the amount of hours required outside of the class, created many instances where the participants’ relationships with friends suffered or were strained. Many participants seemed to rely on family and spousal support with the notion that there is an unsaid acceptance and love when needing help from family. When dealing with friendships, many women felt that they lost friendships due to the demands of work because
131 friendships were not able to bear the stress and neglect that takes part when a person is working and raising children. Another theme that emerged from the study was the difficulty the participants face when their parents grow older or when family members are ill. Most of the older participants had difficulty maintaining a work-life balance when bearing the burden of taking care of elderly parents.
Lastly, the women in this study spoke about their experiences and struggles maintaining a work-life balance. The women who did speak of a positive work-life balance had figured out a system that worked for them in order to remain balanced and organized. These were both women who had children and who did not but overall had similar sentiments that they felt a sense of balance due to prioritizing work and home and figuring out how to plan so that each were being taken care of. However, most of the women did not see themselves as successfully maintaining a work-life balance but rather just managing both to the best of her ability at any given time. One significant theme to come out of the women’s interviews was that everything is a choice and as an adjunct, she has to decide to accept or reject a class, when and how often to grade, and how to manage family time. Choices may not always seem evident, but ultimately, it is all a choice.
Mentorship
Mentorship is something that has been deemed a necessity in a person’s career today.
Mentors are meant to guide those who are new to a field or position and help make transitions easier. However, an overwhelming number of participants in this study declared that they did not have any mentors in their professional lives. Some of the women had mentors in college or high school from their professors or teachers, but as a community college faculty member, none reported having a direct mentor who had helped them with the process of being an adjunct or the
132 process of applying for full-time positions. A few participants did say that there were fellow adjuncts who had given them advice along the way and had in a sense turned into a mentor.
Limitations of the Study
The participants in this study, though wide-ranging in age, ethnicity, relationship status, amount of children, and number of campuses employed at, are not able to fully encompass the experiences and life course of every female adjunct faculty members at every community college. It is understood that there are many experiences that have not been shared in this study, and due to the sample size, it is not possible to extract every person’s life course or to assume that each female adjunct has experienced what the women in this study have shared.
Since the participants in this study were asked to recall various periods in their lives, their interviews are subjective to the interviewee’s memory and may not always be historically accurate. The researcher did not have any prior relationships with a majority of the participants, so she worked to establish trust and validity to the participants by giving the participants an overview of the study as well as the necessity and importance of their participation. The participants were also informed that the researcher herself was also an adjunct and hoped that this would establish a sense of confidence and trust that the researcher was trying to tell the participants’ story as truthfully as possible in order to begin to fill the gaps in literature. Since the researcher did not know the participants beforehand, she can only assume that each participant was honest in recounting her story.
Recommendations
This study provides results that give insight into the lives and experiences of female adjunct faculty members who work at community colleges. This study validates a need for administrators to develop policies and innovative programs so female adjuncts can be better
133 supported at work while striving to maintain a work-life balance. This study also demonstrates that much more research needs to be conducted about all adjuncts, and also needs more focus on how women can be better supported in both the work place and at home, regardless of marital status or if they have children. There is also a great need for a mentorship program with adjuncts at community college so they can have a connection to someone on their campus and allow them to feel less alone, transient, and isolated.
Future research. There is still a tremendous need to continue researching female adjunct faculty. There are very few studies and articles written about female adjuncts, and almost none have looked at the female adjunct and the multiple roles these women hold.
Since there have been so few studies on female adjunct faculty, opportunities exist to delve deeper into this topic. Utilizing the life story method as a framework is just one way of discovering a person’s experiences and the path that they have undergone. Further research would give a chance for more adjuncts to be examined and to have a larger population to sample from. Since conducting interviews can be time consuming and limit the amount of adjuncts interviewed, developing a questionnaire to administer to adjuncts would also be a beneficial way to gather more qualitative data. This questionnaire could also focus on expanded topics such as asking adjuncts what they need from a community college in order to feel successful and connected to their department. One of the best outcomes of this type of future research would be to gain an even greater number of female adjunct faculty members who could be researched in order to discover if the experiences from the women in this study are universal.
The following research recommendations are suggested:
Longitudinal studies. One of the most important areas in which to expand this study would be to follow a group of women over time in order to view how these women adapt to
134 changes and important life events. This could be an area in which patterns may be found about how women adapt through life transitions as well as the strategies women employ to eventually find full-time employment. This would greatly benefit women who are newly graduated and becoming an adjunct for the first time, or to help those who have been working as an adjunct for a few years and are beginning to feel discouraged or disillusioned. By reading about what other women have accomplished and how they eventually became full-time, other adjuncts would hopefully gain an understanding about the difficulties adjuncts face and be more prepared with the emotional, psychological, and financial burdens that can be placed on them by obtaining an adjunct position.
Expansion. By expanding the current study to include additional interviews with women, as well as administering questionnaires, this would allow a broader view of the experiences of female adjuncts as well as their needs and struggles. This could greatly maximize the current research and allow for much more data-driven solutions to help female adjuncts feel more confident and comfortable in their current position.
Addition of male adjunct faculty. This study aimed to purposely understand the experiences of female adjunct faculty members at community colleges; however, including the life stories of male adjunct faculty would show the similarities and differences of gender experiences and possible gender bias. This would also open up opportunity to see how male and female adjuncts have similar and different experiences and why those differences might occur. It would be interesting to track the length of time it takes a male adjunct to become full-time as opposed to the length of time it takes a woman adjunct to become full-time and see if any noticeable differences occur. Another area of interest would be to see if there is a difference in
135 how male and female adjuncts feel they are treated within their department and if there is a difference in their feelings of connection to the culture of the college.
Researcher Reflection
The researcher would like to share how this study impacted her in both personal and professional ways. First, the data collection process was a very exciting part of the dissertation because the researcher was finally given the chance to hear about female adjuncts’ experiences and how they balance their work and home life. However, it was also one of the hardest parts of this process. There was an immense amount of ambiguity in wondering if there would be enough interest in this study and if enough women would agree to participate, especially since these women typically did not know me and many were referred by other adjunct faculty. This made me realize that I needed them to trust in me and for them to believe that I was there for the purpose to accurately and honesty tell their story and experiences.
It was also incredibly moving to interview the women who participated in this study who dedicated their time and energy to help someone they did not know. They have inspired me to see just how talented and motivated all these women are, and I am in awe of all the responsibilities that these women juggle. I am forever indebted to these women for giving their time and sharing their life course, and I know that these shared experiences are only the beginning of these amazing women’s stories and experiences. I am excited to see what wonderful things they do.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this research project began because the researcher was interested in learning about female adjunct faculty like herself. This study sought to examine the work-life balance of female adjuncts and the coping strategies they implement so that other female adjunct
136 members may be inspired by the participants in this study who have shared their experiences.
There are three main conclusions that have resulted from this study. The first conclusion is that there needs to be a mentoring program set up for adjunct faculty when they are hired at an institution. By being paired up with a full-time faculty member or an experienced adjunct, a new adjunct would immediately feel more comfortable by having a friendly face on campus and someone to contact if they had any questions or concerns. This would help alleviate the enormous amount of ambiguity and confusion that comes along with working at a new community college. The second conclusion is that more research needs to take place on the issues of coping strategies and work-life balance for female adjunct faculty. More women need to discuss their experiences and share their stories in order for others to learn better coping strategies. One of the ways this could be accomplished is through a longitudinal study, which would be helpful in showing how female adjuncts have navigated their work environment and they could share helpful tips and strategies for finally obtaining a full-time position. Lastly, it would also be extremely helpful to include male adjuncts and to see what kind of similarities and differences there are in the experiences male and female adjuncts face while working at a community college. It would also be beneficial to see if men are treated differently in the work place and if they are hired for a full-time position any quicker than women.
Finally, it is important to note that the topic of work-life balance is a constantly evolving and shifting issue and one participant, Billie, summed it up best when she said the following:
I think we talk a lot about just life, work, balance, but just hearing myself talk, I realize that that means a lot of different things to different people. There's not one juggling act. There are many juggling acts, and there are many little decisions that go into the bigger decisions about balance.
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APPENDIX A
Instrument
Question #1 [Early adulthood]
About the period in your life immediately after completing your education or...your early twenties. What was the level of your education? Did it include college education or graduate education? What did you think you would like to become in terms of occupation and type of lifestyle or family life. ...What were you thinking then and how did things actually turn out?
Question #2 [Childhood and adolescence]
Thinking of the period in your life before completing your education and the goals that you and your family held for you, what was your family’s attitude toward women’s education and what you would become? What was the effect of your parents’ education, presence of brothers and sisters, family finances, involvement in a faith community, family expectations? How was your education different from or similar to that of your parents and brothers and sisters?
Question #3 [Adulthood – current]
Since completing your education, what kinds of achievement and frustration have you experienced? What type of mentors have you had? What has happened that you didn’t expect-in employment, family, faith, further education? Has there been job discrimination, children, separation or divorce, health problems of yourself or a family member? What about moves, membership in the community, faith community, housing problems, racial integration, job loss?
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And feelings about yourself? Have there been good things such as particular rewards, satisfaction, or recognition?
Question #4 [Adulthood - future]
Looking back at your life from this vantage point, and ahead to the future, what are your main concerns? What are your goals, hopes and dreams for the next few years? What problems do you hope to solve? Looking further out, where do you hope to be a few years from now with respect to work or additional schooling, family, faith, community, mentors, health, finances, etc.?
Question #5 [Strategies for balancing life]
What coping strategies do you use to respond to concerns related to the plurality of roles? Have you ever felt pressured to choose between work and home? What made you think that you could do both successfully? Do you feel that your family life or work life have suffered because of your involvement in work or family? Have you felt any guilt related to either family or work?
Are there times that you felt particularly successful at juggling the demands of both work and home? Why? Were you prepared for the demands of work and life balance? Why or why not?
What strategies do you implement in your own life in order to remain balanced?
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APPENDIX B
Demographic Form
Socio-demographic Questions: Mother’s Maiden Name ______
Pseudonym ______
Birth date ______
Place of birth ______
Race/Ethnicity ______
Occupation ______Full time ___ Part-time ___#hours/week___
Employer______
Marital Status ______Year _____
Spouse (partner) birth date ______
Husband’s (partner’s) education and occupation______
Children (gender and year of birth) ______
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Mother’s education and occupation ______
Father’s education and occupation ______
Siblings (gender and year of birth) ______
Percentage of total household income that you earn ______
Health, illness, accidents, disability______
Religious background ______
Second language(s) ______
Lived in foreign country (name of country(ies)______
Travel outside of the US (name of country(ies) ______
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APPENDIX C
Informed Consent Letter
This research project is being conducted for a dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy. This project will consist of a semi-structured interview that will take about an hour. The purpose of this study is to explore the narratives of female adjuncts’ lives as they balance work in the community college and family. It is to understand the challenges part-time women adjuncts face as well as any coping strategies they employ.
Your participation in this study is completely voluntary. You should be aware that the foreseeable risks or potential discomfort to you as a result of participating in this study are minimal. There are five big questions that are designed to help you recall several different periods of your life. I would like for you to tell me what stands out as being significant about them. Most people find this an interesting and enjoyable conversation. There is no major risk to you in answering any of the questions. If, however, you are uncomfortable with any question, you may decline to answer it, and you may terminate the interview at any time for any reason.
You are free to decide not to participate, not complete all the research procedures or answer questions, or to withdraw at any time without it affecting your relationship with any other entity. Further, your job status will not be affected by refusal to participate or by withdrawal from the study at any time. All information collected will remain anonymous and confidential, except to the researcher, and all relevant data collected will remain private.
In order to use the data from the study, I would like to ask your permission and if you would agree with the following arrangements. Please initial the appropriate line:
_____ I agree to participate in this research and would allow appropriate quotes to be used in publications. These individual responses would not be associated with my name or workplace, and would be referred to only by a pseudonym.
OR
_____ I agree to participate in this research but do not wish for any of my quotes to be used in publications.
In either case, you should be aware that the foreseeable risks or potential discomfort to you as a result of participating in this study are minimal. Your participation in this study is voluntary. You are free to decide not to participate or to withdraw at any time without it affecting your relationship with any other entity. Upon your request, I will provide a copy of any published papers that take place as a result of this study.
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The researcher plans to use the data collected in this project for subsequent analyses and would like to share the raw data with other researchers. Before doing so, all personally identifying information will be removed from your interview transcript.
_____ please initial if you consent to these plans. If not, please leave the line blank.
With your permission, interviews will be recorded electronically, and then stored electronically. The interview content will then be transcribed. All data collected will remain confidential. We are asking you for your mother’s maiden name and will code each interview with that name. All relevant data collected within the jurisdiction of the investigator, including interview notes, recordings, and transcriptions will be placed in a locked cabinet and destroyed after all interviews are transcribed.
Please feel free to ask us to stop or resume taping this discussion at any point in our conversation. Please initial below if you are comfortable with the format of the interview session.
____ May I record this interview? If no, please rest-assured that no one will be recording any portion of the interview.
____ May I take notes during the interview?
I understand that the investigator is willing to answer any inquiries I may have concerning the research herein described. I understand that I may contact Dr. Margaret Weber, faculty advisor at Pepperdine University if I have other questions or concerns about this research. If I have questions about my rights as a research participant, I understand that I can contact Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis Chairperson of the Graduate and Professional School Institutional Review Board at Pepperdine University via email at [email protected] or at 310-568-5753.
I will be informed of any significant new findings developed during the course of my participation in this research which may have a bearing on my willingness to continue in the study.
I understand that in the event of physical injury resulting from the research procedures in which I am to participate, no form of compensation is available. Medical treatment may be provided at my own expense or at the expense of my health care insurer which may or may not provide coverage. If I have questions, I should contact my insurer.
I understand to my satisfaction the information regarding participation in the research project. All my questions have been answered to my satisfaction. I have received a copy of this informed consent form which I have read and understand. I hereby consent to participate in the research described above.
At this point, I want to inquire if you fully understand these statements. If so, by signing this form, you agree to participate.
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______Signature Date
I have explained and defined in detail the research procedure in which the subject has consented to participate. Having explained this and answered any questions, I am cosigning this form and accepting this person’s consent.
______Principal Investigator Date
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APPENDIX D
Interview Protocol
Brief Introduction of the research study
The purpose of this study is to explore the narratives of female adjunct instructors at the community college as they balance family and work. It is to understand how women adjuncts at the community college are influenced by identity, relationships, drive, motivation and adaptation, the coping strategies they employ, and what factors impact their work-life balance.
To accomplish this, we are interviewing female adjunct faculty at community colleges in order to inform leaders of higher education and to influence policy based off of these women’s experiences.
This interview will take approximately an hour. We will begin with reading the consent form and obtaining your signature that you wish to participate in the study. The questions at the beginning are very brief to get a snapshot of you, your present work, your education, and your living arrangements. Then I will ask five big questions that are designed to help you recall several different periods of your life. I would like for you to tell me what stands out as being significant about them. Most people find this an interesting and enjoyable conversation. If, however, at any time you would rather not answer, you are free to decline.
Administration of the consent form
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In order to continue with the interview, we need your written consent on this form, which has been approved by the IRB at Pepperdine University, and which assures you that there is no major risk to you in answering any of the questions. If you are uncomfortable with any question, you may decline to answer it, and you may terminate the interview at any time for any reason.
The interviewer goes over the form with the respondent and answers any questions.
Interviewer collects the form and leaves a copy with the interviewee.
Background questions
I would like for you to fill out some basic information about yourself on this form that will accompany the interview. It includes information about occupation, marital status, age, etc.
The interview instrument [turn on tape]
Conclusion [turn off tape]
Do you have anything to change or add, or any questions or suggestions that you would like to offer? If something comes to mind later on, we would be glad to hear from you. You can find a mailing address, phone number and email address on the initial letter and on your copy of the consent form. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate very much what you have told me and your valuable contribution to this research.
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APPENDIX E
Invitation Letter to Participate
I would like to invite you to participate in a research study I am conducting with female adjunct faculty members. The study is entitled “The Work-Life Balance of Female Adjunct
Faculty at Southern California Community Colleges.” I am currently a doctoral student in
Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy at the Graduate School of Education and
Psychology at Pepperdine University. I have been working in scholarly areas for learning, technology, and leadership, especially for women and developmental English students. Women are making important strides in education, careers, and influencing the global economy, while at the same time trying to balance multiple roles. This study provides awareness of the experiences of female adjunct faculty working at a community college and how they balance family and work responsibilities.
The purpose of this study is threefold:
1) How do female adjunct instructors at Southern California community colleges describe
their life course as being influenced by identity structure, relationship style, drive,
motivation and adaptive style.
2) What coping strategies are female adjuncts in community colleges using in able to
maintain a work-life balance?
3) What demographic factors (age, ethnicity, socioeconomics, first generation) of female
adjunct instructors are associated with the life story elements (identity, adaptations,
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motivation, and relationships) that impact the work-life balance of female part-time
instructors.
My research study follows the life story method. I will be conducting personal interviews with female subjects that are employed at Southern California community colleges. It is anticipated that the interview will require about 60 minutes of your time. Your name will be coded so that your responses will be confidential and anonymous. All individuals that participate in this study will receive a copy of the findings if interested.
I would like to invite you to participate in the study. Your participation is completely voluntary. You are free to decide not to participate or to withdraw at any time without affecting your relationship with any other entity.
Thank you in advance for your help. If you have any questions or concerns about this study, please do not hesitate to contact me by phone xxx-xxx-xxxx or by email at
My warmest regards,
Jennifer Triplett
Graduate Student, Pepperdine University
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APPENDIX F
Notice of Approval from IRB
Pepperdine University 24255 Pacific Coast Highway Malibu, CA 90263 TEL: 310-506-4000
NOTICE OF APPROVAL FOR HUMAN RESEARCH
Date: December 07, 2015
Protocol Investigator Name: Jennifer Triplett
Protocol #: 15-11-123
Project Title: The Work-Life Balance Of Female Adjunct Faculty At Southern California Community Colleges
School: Graduate School of Education and Psychology
Dear Jennifer Triplett:
Thank you for submitting your application for exempt review to Pepperdine University's Institutional Review Board (IRB). We appreciate the work you have done on your proposal. The IRB has reviewed your submitted IRB application and all ancillary materials. Upon review, the IRB has determined that the above entitled project meets the requirements for exemption under the federal regulations 45 CFR 46.101 that govern the protections of human subjects.
Your research must be conducted according to the proposal that was submitted to the IRB. If changes to the approved protocol occur, a revised protocol must be reviewed and approved by the IRB before implementation. For any proposed changes in your research protocol, please submit an amendment to the IRB. Since your study falls under exemption, there is no requirement for continuing IRB review of your project. Please be aware that changes to your protocol may prevent the research from qualifying for exemption from 45 CFR 46.101 and require submission of a new IRB application or other materials to the IRB. A goal of the IRB is to prevent negative occurrences during any research study. However, despite the best intent, unforeseen circumstances or events may arise during the research. If an unexpected situation or adverse event happens during your investigation, please notify the IRB as soon as possible. We will ask for a complete written explanation of the event and your written response. Other actions also may be required depending on the nature of the event. Details regarding the timeframe in which adverse events must be reported to the IRB and documenting the adverse event can be found in the Pepperdine University Protection of Human Participants in Research: Policies and Procedures Manual at community.pepperdine.edu/irb.
Please refer to the protocol number denoted above in all communication or correspondence related to your application and this approval. Should you have additional questions or require clarification of the contents of this letter, please contact the IRB Office. On behalf of the IRB, I wish you success in this scholarly pursuit.
Sincerely,
Judy Ho, Ph.D., IRB Chairperson
cc: Dr. Lee Kats, Vice Provost for Research and Strategic Initiatives
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